


Clothed in Light

by playwithdinos



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, F/M, I mean sort of, Multi, royal asra au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2019-10-23 04:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17676635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playwithdinos/pseuds/playwithdinos
Summary: The first time Asra kisses her is their wedding day.





	1. Sun-Sighted

The first time Asra meets her, he does not learn her name.

He’s down at the docks, a modest little shelter over his head as he shuffles a worn tarot deck in his hands. It’s not the best place to make coin, but that’s not what he comes to the docks for. Instead, he comes to see the ships as they arrive, to catch the scent of spices and salts or the colours of textiles, to attune his ear to accents and the names and faces of who comes and goes in the city he calls home.

There’s a lull in the crowd when he spots her—and he spots _her_ first. Her gaze is looking over the crowd, towards the town. There’s a light breeze catching in her long black hair, and she’s got one hand up to her head to keep the flowers pinned there from blowing away. Her dress is bright red, long and flowing, made of a delicate and expensive-looking fabric.

He does not recognise the flowers in her hair. They look tropical, and nearly as beautiful as she is.

“My fortune?”

Asra clears his throat, and reluctantly turns his attention back to the customer he already _has_. Disguised by magic though he is, he still finds himself tucking his face into his scarf to hide the flush he feels on his cheeks.

“Past, present, and future,” he says, his magic layering an old and crackling voice overtop his own as he lays three cards down on his blanket.

He can still see the strange, lovely girl out of the corner of his eye—and the moment he speaks, her brow furrows, and she turns her head to look at him.

He wonders for a moment if he’s botched the spell. But his customer doesn’t seem to notice, so he continues with the reading. He tries to ignore the intensity of the strange girl’s gaze, or the way her eyes narrow as she stands there and stares at him, and does not move or seem to blink even as carts and people pass between them.

“… and I suggest you write to your mother, young man,” Asra finishes, swiping the cards back up into his hand. “She must be worried sick.”

The man in question—older by far than Asra—stands and leaves with a stiff _thanks_ , though his eyes have the gleam of tears in them as he goes. As for the girl, Asra can see her, some fifteen paces away.  She’s standing stock still, watching Asra with an expression that is either very angry, or very confused. He honestly can’t tell which.

“A reading for the young lady?” Asra calls, shuffling his cards together.

She blinks rapidly, as if shocked she’s being addressed. She actually glances over her shoulder, before turning back to look at him once again.

“No need to be shy. Just an old man and the tarot, at your service.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she approaches, one hand on the flowers in her hair, the other holding the skirt of her dress to keep it from dragging in the dirt.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” she says, her voice low with a surprising formality. “I suspect my question may be rude, and I apologise in advance if it is, however… are you using an illusion spell? You look and sound much the same age as myself.”

Asra glances at the small mirror to his right—and sure enough, his spell is still firmly in place. A wizened old man, sea and sun weathered, looks back at him through his reflection.

“You’ve got me,” he says with a lopsided grin.

“Oh!” She kneels down on his rug and leans forward, trying to peer past his scarf and hat to see him more closely. “My illusions instructor was always scolding me, I could never see what I was supposed to be copying.”

The closer she leans, the warmer Asra’s cheeks grow. “Sun-sighted,” he says, a little breathless. _One who sees through all illusions_.

“I don’t know about _that_.” She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

He clears his throat. “A reading, then,” he says, perhaps a little too loudly, before she can ask _why_ he is trying to look like an old man. “Three cards it is. Your past, present and future.”

“Oh!” she looks a little crestfallen. “I’m afraid I don’t have any money.”

“On the house,” he says, breezily, though her dress looks finer than any other he has seen on the docks today. He lays the cards down on the carpet between them, face down.

She hesitates a moment. “I…”

“Girl!”

She stiffens, and her eyes go wide, as a man storms out of the crowd from behind her.

“I told you to stay put!” the man snaps.

Asra only gets a quick glance of the man’s fine clothing, and his furious expression, before he grabs her arm and yanks her to her feet.

She does not fight him. She only stands as bidden, and looks down at the ground.

The man leads her towards a carriage some number of paces away—a palace carriage, one of the ones sent down to bring visiting dignitaries up the winding streets of Vesuvia to its seat of government.

Asra looks down at the cards he’s drawn—and, after a moment’s consideration, flips them one by one. The Tower, the Emperor Reversed, the Lovers.

He considers the Emperor card, and its familiar dog-eared corner. His gaze flicks back up to the carriage, slowly rattling up the cobblestones towards the palace.

Asra tucks his cards into his bag, and starts packing up.

 

Her name is Kalani. She comes from northern islands Asra has never been to, and so do the flowers woven into her hair.

The man who grabbed her arm at the docks is her father. He leads her through court and does not allow her to leave his side even for a moment, playing the part of a worried and doting father. He is all easy smiles and friendly words; but he is also a too-straight back, and a too-tight hand on Kalani’s arm.

For her part, she is silent, and so completely removed from the curiosity and wonder he caught that small glimpse of, down at the docks. She walks stiff and stilted, and speaks little even when spoken to. Her face is frozen into a perpetually stern expression, at total odds with the sway of the wind in her clothing and hair.

“Why’s she so grumpy?” Asra, invisible, overhears one of the servants wonder.

His companion sighs. “She’s terrified,” the old woman corrects.

Her father has brought her to Vesuvia to be married.

“Her mother, lost to us many years ago, was the greatest magician to sit at my Queen’s side in generations,” he says to the count. “My daughter carries that great magic in her blood—I can provide genealogies back to the explorers who first settled our fair isles, on both sides of our great family.”

The man keeps sending significant glances to the empty seat next to Asra’s mother.

Aisha, for her part, looks entirely unimpressed. She is fixing Kalani with an intense stare, which Kalani doesn’t seem to notice. She’s standing stock still, staring off into space without looking at anything at all.

Asra’s uncle regards Kalani with an expression that is strangely… _blank_ for the count of Vesuvia. Asra is used to his uncle’s booming laugh and broad smiles, even in the most serious of political discussions. He is known for greeting total strangers as if they have always been close friends and staunch allies.

But Asra cannot read his uncle as he regards Kalani. He cannot even guess what his uncle is thinking.

“My child?” Salim says, in the privacy of their rooms. “Marrying someone he hardly knows? I don’t care if your brother’s the count, he can’t be considering it, Aisha. He can’t.”

Aisha stands while her husband paces, rubbing her knuckles to her lips in thought. “I can’t _begin_ to imagine what my brother is thinking,” she admits, her brow furrowing. She closes her eyes, lets out an annoyed sigh, and says, “Asra, darling, you _know_ that invisibility spell gives me a headache, would you mind?”

Asra, already sitting on the couch, sheepishly drops it. “Thought I fixed it this time,” he says, more than a little disappointed. “Sorry.”

“It’s a little better, but your light resonance is still off by a few motes.”

“Your brother’s finally gone mad is what,” Salim snaps, rushing over to Asra. He grips his child’s shoulders firmly, while his familiar slithers off his shoulders and onto Asra’s. “Don’t worry, Asra, it’s going to be alright. We’re not going to let him marry you off for a _trade deal_. It’s preposterous!”

“The trade deal is hardly worth marrying anyone for.” Aisha strokes her own familiar’s head as she considers the events of the day. “And her father is certainly in a hurry to marry the poor girl off somewhere far away from home.”

Salim releases Asra’s shoulders and turns to his wife. “You think she’s pregnant?”

She shakes her head. “Too long of a journey. Whatever she _did_ , it caused enough of a scandal to drag her halfway across the world and throw her at the highest bidder. The man’s clearly trying to recoup his losses, as quickly as possible.”

“You think so?”

“Poor thing was shaking in her sandals. Even if that awful man had let her answer any of my questions, I doubt she’d heard any of them.”

Asra feels Faust slither out from under her favourite pillow and into his lap. She coils herself happily around his hands, though he feels notes of confusion from her as she tries to understand the tension in the room.

“She did seem rather timid. What do you think will happen to her when we say no?”

She bumps her nose against his bag. She does it again, and again, until Asra takes out the tarot cards. Then she happily winds around one of his arms as he slowly shuffles the deck.

“He’ll try somewhere else. Somewhere even farther away from her home.”

“I can’t imagine he’ll care too much how they’ll treat her.”

His mother sighs again. “That poor girl.”

He loses track of the rest of his parent’s conversation while he shuffles. He loses himself in the feel of the cards sliding through his fingers, through the faded ambient magic of the deck reaching out for his own, listening for the distant voices of the figures portrayed on the cards themselves. Sometimes, he thinks he can almost hear them…

He pulls a card out of the deck at random, and holds it between two figures. The Emperor, again reversed.

Sun-sighted, he thinks, regarding the card. Remembering her reading—a great upheaval in the past, a dominating figure in the present, and a choice to be made in the future.

“We need to help her,” Asra says, tucking the card back into his deck.

 

The first time Asra kisses her is their wedding day.

Her lips tremble—her palms are clammy where their hands are joined, and she’s so wound up that even the smallest sound spooks her.

Everything does, throughout the night. Asra stays at her side for the feast both out of obligation, and pity. She seems frozen in place, wide-eyed, an animal in a hunter’s sights—she jumps a little every time one of her (untouched) plates are cleared, or some new act starts, or the music changes a little too quickly.

Her father watches her every move with a scowl. She keeps glancing at him every time she does something—and every single time, she seems to second guess herself.

Asra feels so bad for her after the first course is cleared that he leans in to whisper, “You had it right at the beginning. Outside in.”

She lets out a small, frustrated noise through her teeth, before promptly biting her lip.

They dance only once. She steps on his feet so many times that they ache, but Asra doesn’t blame her.

The Count embraces her, and she flinches. “Welcome to the family, Kalani,” he says, with a warm smile and a soft voice. “We are honoured to have you.”

She has to take several short breaths before she can manage a reply. “The honour is mine, my lord.”

“Uncle Sahir,” he corrects her, with a lopsided grin. He throws an arm loosely over her shoulders, either ignoring her tension or oblivious to it, and Asra falls into step at her side as the count leads her towards the back of the hall. “Kalani, you are a vision in that dress, and your presence here is a blessing—but I think my nephew should show you to your rooms.”

Her jaw visibly clenches.

“ _Uncle_ ,” Asra says.

But the count is undeterred, and steers them away from the party. He chats amiably with (or at) Kalani the whole way, telling her about this portrait or that staircase or which statue toppled in the last earthquake…

Outside their room—Asra’s new set of rooms, now separate from his parents’—the count pulls Asra aside, letting Kalani enter first.

“You may not understand this now,” he starts to say.

“I understand it about as well as she does,” Asra snaps, unable to stop himself.

His uncle sighs. “Asra. You are not a child any longer—and you are my heir.”

Asra rolls his eyes. “Yeah—”

“ _Yes_. You have to think of your responsibilities to this city, instead of—daydreaming all day, or whatever it is you do. When I accepted this marriage contract—”

“That _neither_ of us want.”

“—I did so with _both of you_ in mind.”

“Then maybe you could have just _offered her a job_ like Mom suggested instead of making her marry someone she doesn’t know.”

Asra can only scowl at his uncle.

Uncle Sahir sighs again—heavier, this time. “Just… trust my judgement on this,” he says, giving Asra’s shoulder a squeeze. “That’s all I ask.”

Asra rubs his palm over his face. “It’s a lot _to_ ask.”

Sahir squeezes his shoulder, harder this time. And he leans in closer, whispering in Asra’s ear, “If you bed that girl tonight, I will never speak to you again.”

“No shit,” Asra deadpans into his palm. At his uncle’s intense stare, Asra rolls his shoulders and says, “I’m not a _monster_ , Uncle.”

His uncle laughs—all at once booming loud, where moments before there were only hushed whispers. He claps Asra hard on the back once, and he steps back to regard Asra with a warm, fond smile. “That’s my boy,” he says as he walks away, finally leaving Asra alone at the door.

The first room is a small sitting room for greeting guests—Asra can see some of his things arranged on shelves, and he itches to take them all down and turn them over, to make sure they weren’t damaged during the move. Someone has taken pains to light candles—and Asra finds himself extinguishing them, one by one, scowling at the waste.

After a moment, one of the blankets laid across the couch shifts—and Faust slithers eagerly out from under it, vibrating with excitement.

 _Asra!_ She slithers up the arm he bends down to offer her. _Pretty!_

“Well I’m glad you approve,” he whispers, scratching her chin.

 _Party?_ she asks, tilting her head curiously.

He sighs. “Wish I could have just stayed in here with you.”

Faust flicks her tongue out at him—and then turns her head, and does the same in the direction of the bedroom.

The door is open, a soft light spilling out across the floor.

_Friend?_

Asra sighs again—heavier this time. “Not yet,” he whispers. “Maybe soon.”

When Asra enters the room, closing the door behind him, Kalani is on the bed—sitting as small as possible, her knees tucked into her chest, and her eyes impossibly wide as she stares up at him.

She’s clutching at her dress; the vibrant red fabric bunches up between her fingers. One of the flowers has fallen out of her hair, and there are soft white petals scattered over the blankets before her.

Her eyes keep flicking between him and Faust.

He clears his throat. “Faust,” he says, gesturing to the snake. “Meet Kalani. My uh. Wife. Kalani, this is Faust. My familiar.”

 _Wife!_ Faust stretches out, her tongue rapidly tasting the air. _Wife pretty!_

Asra clears his throat, and can feel his cheeks growing warm.

Kalani looks between Asra and the snake with an expression that can only be described as dubious. “Nice snake,” she says, her tone flat—and then immediately bites her lip, a flash of mortification passing over her features before it is replaced with the same, glowering terror from before.

 _Very nice!_ Faust insists, bobbing her head. _Asra! Kalani pretty! Say!_

“She says you’re pretty,” Asra blurts. “Nice! You’re—your dress is nice. Pretty. The dress.”

Kalani’s eyes grow wide, and her lips thin.

Oblivious to the growing awkwardness, Faust slips off Asra’s arm, to the floor, and then slithers over to the bed. She approaches Kalani eagerly—leaving a mortified Asra far behind her—and tastes the air over and over with her tongue.

Kalani’s feet are bare, and Faust’s tongue flicks the tip of her biggest toe. Kalani actually _almost_ smiles, a little, and pulls her toes back under her skirts.

_Tickle!_

Asra finally finds his voice. “Faust!” he scolds—but he still does not approach the bed, rooted in place by just how small Kalani has made herself upon it. “I’m sorry—she’s just being friendly.”

But as Faust bobs back and forth in the air, and twists until her head is upside down, Kalani seems to relax. Just enough to reach out one hand, palm up, delicate fingers slightly curled, and tentatively offer it to Faust to taste.

Delighted, Faust tastes the air around Kalani’s hand.

“Hello Faust,” Kalani says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Faust takes the opportunity to slither up her arm. She goes much slower than she would with Asra, taking her time to pause and flick her tongue against Kalani’s skin, and clothes, before draping herself across Kalani’s shoulders, slithering in and out of her long dark hair.

At the end of it, she tickles Kalani’s cheek with her tongue.

Kalani almost smiles again. “Thank you, Faust. I’m afraid I don’t know the etiquette for... being so _close_ with another magician’s familiar.”

Faust wiggles as she tries to contain her excitement. _Chin scritches!_

“She likes her chin to be scratched,” Asra informs, finally crossing the room to the spacious closet on the other side. Everything in it is meticulously arranged—Asra _itches_ at the thought of the servants touching all of his things—one side for Kalani, and one for him. His clothes are all hung, and the trunk he’d locked with magic tucked neatly at the bottom.

Kalani’s side of the closet is nearly empty—a few fine dresses hang there, and some delicate sandals rest on the floor, but it doesn’t even look like she has anything to _sleep_ in, let alone wear during the day.

He thinks back to the room when he first walked in. He… only saw things that belonged to him. Only his books, his trinkets and baubles.

Back in the bedroom, Faust is radiating wordless happiness as Kalani continues to dutifully scratch her chin. He thinks he hears Kalani laugh—or, _almost_ laugh, rather. Soft and breathy.

Asra shakes his head, his cheeks warm again, and whispers the unlocking spell on the trunk.

The things he had thrown in there for safekeeping are still in place, untouched. His parents’ spell books, an aged tarot card deck, some of his childhood toys, among other things—and, buried under it all, what he was really looking for: some plain, unassuming clothing, loose fitting and comfortable.

When he’s finished changing, he leaves his gown in the closet. Kalani looks up as he closes the door behind him, startled to stillness, before she notices his clothes and her brow furrows in confusion.

“Good!” Asra says a little too loudly as he starts sidestepping towards the closest window. “You’re getting along. Great. Fantastic. I uh—I’ll be back _later_ , Faust will keep you company. I noticed you don’t—there’s not—your things aren’t here yet so. You can use mine. Read my books. Or whatever.”

Asra opens the window and peers out. From the looks of things, a simple featherfall charm will help him reach that roof down below, and it’ll be easy enough to just climb down and sneak across the grounds from there…

“Where are you going?”

“Out?” Asra spares a glance over his shoulder, but Kalani still hasn’t moved from the bed. “I haven’t been able to see Muri—my friend—in weeks, let _alone_ explain to him what’s going on. He’ll be worried sick.”

“Your friend?”

“Best friend. Only friend, really, except Faust, so it’s important I go see him as soon as possible.” Asra starts to climb on the window ledge, testing his weight against the frame. No good if it gives out on him while he casts the charm. “You uh—you go ahead and get some rest, don’t wait up for me. I’ll be back in the morning, promise. Won’t make you go through tomorrow morning without me, that’s for sure.”

He is met with a dubious silence. So he glances back again, half out the window to see Kalani staring at him with an unreadable expression.

Finally, she ventures, “So we’re not…”

Asra clears his throat. “Uh. Not what?”

She raises her eyebrows.

“Right. That.” He slowly climbs back into the room. “Look. You uh. You seem nice. But since this is the longest conversation we’ve had, ever, I thought we could just… table the sex thing.”

“For how long?”

He sighs. After a moment’s hesitation, he finally approaches the bed. He sits on the edge of it opposite Kalani.

She flinches away.

“Hey. I know you didn’t have a say in this—I sure as hell didn’t. So, why don’t we just… take some time to get to know one another, and figure out what we want to do going forward. Yeah?”

He still can’t read her expression, but her eyes are locked onto his.

“We’re not having sex tonight?”

“Nope.”

“Or tomorrow?”

“Possibly never,” Asra assures her.

Her shoulders slump, and the steel of her expression melts into obvious relief.

“Well I wish you’d _said_ that!” she exclaims—and then immediately bites her lip, a subtle flush rising on her dark cheeks.

Asra, startled, can only blink at her.

“I mean—I was just so worried—not that you aren’t perfectly lovely—in a good way—you look pretty too did I say that— _shit_.”

She covers her face with her hands.

Asra can’t help but laugh.

“Alright,” he promises. “Next time we get married, we’ll clear up the sex thing before the wedding.”

She peeks at him from between her fingers. Flustered, he thinks, is a much better look on her than open terror.

“I apologize,” she says, clearly mortified. “That was—improper of me.”

“Don’t worry about it. Been a stressful week.”

“It _has_.”

“Well, you just stay here and rest up.” He gets off the bed and crosses once again to the window. “I’ll be back before breakfast, and no one will even notice I’m gone. Faust will let me know if there’s a problem and I’ll get back as soon as I can—might take me a while, though, it’s a bit of a hike through the woods—”

He’s got one leg out the window when he hears Kalani blurt, “You’re going to the forest?”

He looks back at her. She’s leaning forward on the bed, and her eyes have lit up—all traces of awkwardness gone. As he stares at her, trying to figure out why she’ so excited, she clambers off the bed in a hurry, and actually takes a few steps towards him before apparently deciding against it. “That—that big forest outside the city? The one I saw from the ship?”

Asra glances at Faust, but she only gives him the mental equivalent of a shrug. “Yes?”

She stands in one spot and practically vibrates, wringing her hands together. “What kind of trees are there? Are we far enough south for them to lose their leaves in the fall? Is it an old or medium growth forest? What varietals of moss are most common? Oh, what sort of _fungus_ grows here? And what—”

All of a sudden, she bites her lip and stops talking. She does not cover her face, however, and as she glances at the window behind him he can see the _longing_ in her expression, clear as day.

He looks at Faust again. The little snake seems to have caught Kalani’s excitement, and is bobbing her head repeatedly.

Asra reaches up and runs his hand through his hair—messing up the delicate styling that it’s been in all day.

She has no books. Hardly any clothes. Nothing of her own to entertain her…

“Would you like to come with me?”

He may as well have told her she could take her pick from the treasury.

“Oh, can I? I won’t be a bother, I promise, I won’t say a thing or make a sound—I’ll just look, I won’t touch anything, I swear.”

“Uh. It’s a long walk, it might get a little awkward if we don’t talk _at all_ …”

She crosses hurriedly to the window. “I haven’t seen a forest since I was a little girl! I barely even remember what it looked like—are there bears here? Sometimes forest have bears, I’ve been told. Maybe a jaguar! I’d love to see a jaguar.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Asra tells her. “You need to _change_. You’ll ruin your dress.”

“I don’t care if it gets dirty. Apparently I’m only supposed to wear it once anyway.”

“We need to buy some food in town.” When she stares up at him, blankly, he continues, “You’ll… stick out. A lot.”

“We need to fit in! Of course.” She immediately deflates. “But… my father didn’t let me keep my school uniform. I don’t… I don’t think I _have_ anything else.”

Asra mentally tucks _that_ bit of knowledge away for later consideration. “I have lots,” he says. “More than I need, really. Let’s see what we can find.”

“Do I—do I need to disguise myself? I don’t have my spell books, my father made me leave them behind, and I don’t have any raw materials besides…” She tugs at her hair. “What if someone recognises me? What if they tell my father that we’re not up here having sex?”

“I know a never-mind-me spell,” Asra assures her, trying to steer her towards the closet. “No one will notice us. Really.”

“I need a fake name!” she blurts.

Asra sighs. “Let’s start with _clothes_ ,” he says. “A fake name won’t do you any good in your wedding dress.”

She laughs, bashful, before immediately biting her lip.

Asra’s cheeks grow a little warm. She… sounds very lovely, when she laughs.

Looks lovely, too.

“Right,” she says, awkwardly tugging a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can uh. Probably get out of this myself, I think. If you…”

“Right!” Asra blurts. He hurries himself out of the closet, and then shuts the door behind him. “Just um. Come out when you’re done!”

Faust is still on the bed. As he looks down at her, she tilts her head up at him.

_Blush?_

Asra lets out a long, long breath.

 

“What,” Muriel says after he opens the door, “is that.”

“It’s pumpkin bread, Muri,” Asra says, dropping a loaf into Muriel’s outstretched hand. “I haven’t been gone long enough for you to forget about _pumpkin bread_ , have I?”

Muriel stands blocking his doorway, however, and simply stares over Asra’s head, his lip curling and his eyes wide with open alarm.

Asra sighs, turning to look back at Kalani. She’s at the far end of the clearing, currently kneeling on the ground and… very possibly trying to talk to one of Muriel’s chickens.

“My name is Ka— _Kai_ , my name is Kai,” she’s saying. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve never met a chicken before.”

Yes. Yes she is.

“Alright. You might want to… sit down, or something, a lot’s happened since I saw you last.”

“You’re married.”

Asra glances up at Muriel, startled. Muriel, for his part, isn’t meeting Asra’s gaze.

“You didn’t come. I looked for you.”

“I’m _sorry_ , Muri.” Muriel finally turns, allowing Asra to step into his home. “I just—I couldn’t get away. And Faust isn’t big enough yet to send out on her own, she’d get lost trying to find you.”

 _Wouldn’t_ , Faust sleepily protests from under Asra’s scarf, where she’d been napping for the last leg of the trip.

Asra drops onto Muriel’s bed and runs his hands over his face. “I don’t even know where to _start_.”

“Why is she _here_?”

Asra opens his mouth to reply—but then closes it again. He thinks about how excited she’d been to see a forest up close, how delighted she’d been when Asra told her _no really it’s all right to climb this tree don’t worry about it_ , how she had told him how old that particular tree was and how the tree was always happy to have Asra climbing it’s branches…

_It says every time you climb it’s branches, it almost remembers what excitement is like, yours is so infectious._

“Send her back.”

Asra sits bolt upright on the bed. “What?”

Muriel crosses his arms over his chest. He glowers, but doesn’t meet Asra’s gaze, instead sending his scowl down at the floor in between them. “You heard me.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Muriel doesn’t answer him. He continues to glare down at the floor, his cheeks burning a little the longer Asra stares at him.

“Muri. She’s—she doesn’t have anyone else. If I didn’t take her with me, she’d be sitting around with nothing to do, no one to talk to…”

“Sounds fine to me,” Muriel replies, tight-lipped.

Asra sighs. He stands, ducking his head a little so he can look up into Muriel’s eyes.

“Muri,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what was happening.”

Muriel pointedly looks at a different spot on the floor.

 “I’m sorry I didn’t come find you, or talk to you about it—it just happened so _fast_. Her father was so insistent on the wedding happening right away, I couldn’t get away even for a second.”

Muriel’s jaw works back and forth. His eyes flick back to Asra’s, for a moment, before he lets out a rough breath of air. “You look ridiculous,” he says, and Asra knows he’s forgiven.

Asra grins. “You’re the one pouting at the floor.”

“Not _pouting—”_

Kalani’s voice suddenly drifts from outside. “Oh! Hello! I apologise for my start, I didn’t see you. Is there a polite way to greet you? I’m afraid I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting a wolf before.”

Asra and Muriel dart for the door at the same time.

But the wolf in question, they find once they are outside, isn’t even growling. She is approaching Kalani, her ears forward, her body language neutral.

Kalani is still crouched on the ground, though the chicken seems to have vanished. She’s holding her hand out to Inanna—looking for all the world as if she expects the wolf to shake it.

Inanna regards Kalani, and her hand. Asra holds his breath—Inanna is _fast_ , and is only steps away from Kalani. But she only sniffs the offered hand, before once again regarding Kalani with a neutral, non-threatening expression.

“My name is—oh. Well it’s _actually_ Kalani, but it seems awfully rude to lie to you. Promise you’ll tell anyone who asks my name is Kai?”

Inanna’s ear flicks once.

“May I ask you a question? Is… is Kai a _good_ name? Is it too short? Should I pick something that doesn’t start with a K? I remember it from one of the old stories I was told when I was a little girl, from before I went to school. I don’t know many other names from my home, and I don’t like the other ones half as much. It just sounds so… dashing.”

The wolf tilts her head, before sneezing and shaking herself.

Kalani laughs, sheepish. “I suppose I’ll have to learn to speak wolf before I ask you any more profound questions. Might I pet your fur? It’s so beautiful. I promise to be very gentle.”

With that, Inanna crosses the final steps that separate her from Kalani, and lets Kalani stroke the fur on the side of her neck.

Muriel and Asra watch in total silence—and Asra tries not to notice the slight look of _betrayal_ that passes over Muriel’s face.

“This is because you spoil her,” Muriel accuses, with a sideways glance at Asra.

Asra tries, and fails, to hide his smile behind his hand.


	2. Break and Enter

“Alright,” Kai says.

“ _Okay_ ,” Asra corrects.

“Okay. _Okay_. Oh—kay.”

“People just say it once,” Muriel informs her.

Kai bites her lip and takes a deep breath. Then she says, very softly, “I’m doing it this time. I’m going to… cross that street, and open that door.”

Muriel glances out into the street. It’s a bright, sunny day in Vesuvia, which means everyone in it seems to be outside enjoying the weather. There are several stores on this particular street, and he’s watched more than a dozen people go in and out of any given one while he’s been standing in this alley, waiting as Asra tries to convince Kai to go up to the magic shop.

This is the third day in a row.

They have stood in this alley, and talked about opening the door to a shop all day, and then given up and gone home _twice_ , already. With a glance at the sky, Muriel is starting to think that this will be the third time.

At his side, Inanna lounges in the shade of the buildings, her eyes closed and her breaths steady and even. Every once in a while her leg twitches, as if chasing something in her sleep.

Well. At least _someone’s_ happy.

Kai takes one step out into the sunlight—but a nearby door opens, and she takes four rapid steps back.

“I can’t do it,” she blurts. “What if she hates me, Asra? What if she wants nothing to do with me? What if Father’s already written her and told her how useless I am at everything—”

With that, her jaw snaps shut, and she stands in one place, looking like she’s about to cry.

Earlier than yesterday, at least.

Even though she’s stopped talking, Muriel can feel her misery and anxiety radiating off of her in waves. He glances over at Asra, who is regarding her with a sympathetic, although slightly annoyed expression.

“Kalani,” he says.

Muriel feels her anxiety spike. She makes a face at Asra, and then glances urgently out into the street.

“Kai,” he corrects. “Sorry. Maybe if Muriel and I walked up to the door with you? And we can all go in together? And we can pretend we’re customers, and then you can see if you want to tell her or not?”

Kai takes a deep, shaking breath, and meets Asra’s gaze uncertainly.

“Or we go back to Muriel’s, and try again tomorrow. I bet his chickens are hungry.”

She wrings her hands, chewing on her lip, and looks out into the street, at the door in the unassuming building across from them.

Under all her anxious worry and misery, Muriel detects a note of _intense_ longing.

She _very badly_ wants to go into that shop.

He _really_ doesn’t want to do this every day for the rest of his life.

Muriel sighs, hikes his cloak higher up around his shoulders.

Inanna immediately wakes as he shifts his weight. He waits for her to shake herself off, and then he lumbers out into the street with the wolf at his side.

“Muri?” Asra calls, confused.

He ignores them both—and the people in the street who stop and stare at him, ignoring their surprise at his size like he ignores flies buzzing at his ears. He deliberately takes him time to cross the short distance to the shop, and by the time he has reached the door, Kai and Asra have rushed out to join him.

“What are you doing?” she hisses. “She might _see_ you!”

Muriel puts his hand on the latch and tries it—but the door is locked, and only rattles when he tries to open it.

Kai exhales, half relief and half disappointment. “I guess she’s closed today! Oh well! Let’s try again tomorrow—”

Before Muriel can withdraw his hand, Asra reaches around him and plants his hand flat on the door, just above the lock. There’s a telltale glow of moonlight around his hand, and Muriel hears a _click_ before the latch gives, and little bells ring as the door slowly swings open.

“Pretty lax protections for a magic shop,” Asra remarks idly. “Ladies first?”

Kai, however, remains frozen in place on the doorstep. “You just broke into my aunt’s magic shop.”

“More like I… convinced the door to let us in.”

“I can’t _believe_ you just broke into my aunt’s magic shop.”

“Are you… gonna to go in?”

“My aunt who probably doesn’t even know I exist and now is _definitely_ going to hate me because you _broke into her magic shop_.”

Asra shrugs, and then slips past Muriel and into the shop himself.

Muriel almost follows him—but he feels Kai’s terror spike, so he hesitates. He glances back, and Kai is standing stock still, staring past Muriel into the dark interior of the shop with wide, wide eyes.

Kai—or Kalani, whatever she’s called—hasn’t told Muriel or Asra much about her family. Asra knows she went to a school far from her home to teach her magic, and he _thinks_ that something happened and she had to leave before she graduated. So she couldn’t take her books, or her things with her.

Muriel has thrown some runes, in the two weeks since he met Kai. They are as conflicted as everything about her is— _powerful and frightened, trained and unknowing._

_Alone_ comes up in every reading. _Lost._

She looks like both those things now—so Muriel reaches back and takes her hand.

The frantic whirl of her emotions stutters to a halt. She looks up at him, blinking rapidly, and Muriel suddenly feels aware of how _small_ she is. How _big_ he is, next to her—towering over her on the doorstep, his clumsy hand nearly enveloping her own.

Her skin is so, so soft. And warm, like sunlight through the trees.

She starts to smile a little, and all her worry slowly starts to be replaced by gratitude, with a touch of embarrassment.

He looks away, his own cheeks growing warm. “Stay close,” he grumbles, and leads her inside.

The interior of the shop is lit by a number of softly glowing lamps hanging from the ceiling. They are dim enough to keep an air of mystery about the room, casting strange shadows around the farthest corners. They illuminate a glass counter, a number of jars within and behind it, and a series of drawers, all labeled in a fine, minute hand.  

Asra is examining one such lantern curiously, Faust poking her head out of his scarf. “They’re magic,” he informs them. “It’s clever, too—looks like the metal in the lantern is enchanted to draw power from the light, and feed it back into the spell.”

Muriel closes the door behind Inanna, trying to ignore Kai sidling closer and closer to him. “How did you find this place?” he asks, trying to squint at the shadows in the far corner. The back of his neck itches, like they’re being watched.

Inanna pads into the middle of the room and sniffs—her ears are forward, but her tail is relaxed. She looks more curious than anything, quickly moving to sniff at a stuffed, grey-furred and red-faced monkey on a far shelf.

Asra leaves the lamp alone and leans over the counter, bending so close his nose nearly touches the glass. “We used a spell to find Kai’s estranged aunt, and it led us here.”

Muriel looks down at Kai, one brow raised.

Kai takes a deep, steadying breath. “Once, when I was having dinner with my botany professor, she told me that I had an aunt. An aunt who… left my family, years ago.”

“How did your botany professor find that out?” Asra asks.

“She said she… dug around. She wanted to try and get permission for us to go meet my aunt, but my father never returned her letters so the headmaster wouldn’t let me leave.”

Muriel tilts his head to the side, considering her aura of anxiety and discomfort. “Kai,” he asks, “did you… _ever_ leave your school?”

She shakes her head. “No. Not ’til I was expelled.”

“Expelled?” Asra blurts, shooting upright.

Muriel’s still stuck on her _no_.

Kai bites her lip, and Muriel feels her spike of shame as she steps back, as if trying to blend in with the door at her back.

“Sorry,” Asra says, watching Kai wilt in on herself with a wince. “Sorry—I was just surprised. Please, go on, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Kai, however, is too busy looking at the floor, and does not respond.

Muriel tries squeezing her hand.

After a long moment, she tentatively squeezes back.

Asra quickly busies himself with trying to give Kai space, embarrassed by his own outburst. He skirts the room again, joining Inanna where she stands, still looking at the monkey.

She tilts her head. Asra follows suit, then starts to sway back and forth.

“It’s like it’s eyes are following me…”

As Muriel watches the monkey, its eyes _very clearly_ move to follow Asra.

“Asra—”

Asra chooses that moment to lean in and get a closer look at the monkey—and _it_ chooses that moment to launch itself at Asra’s face with an ear-splitting _shriek_.

Asra throws a barrier up in time to keep his face from getting clawed. Inanna barks and snarls at it, her ears flat against her skull, but the monkey is too quick for her snapping jaws.

The monkey, undeterred, uses the barrier as a launching pad to leap up to the ceiling, where it grabs at something obscured by hanging curtains, shrieking at Asra the whole time.

“I’m so sorry!” Kai shouts over the din. “I’m sorry we broke in! We’re leaving right away!”

“Like hell we are,” Asra yells back. “Hang on, I know a silencing spell…”

Muriel sees the monkey pull on something—and Inanna darts away from Asra just as a magic circle lights up under his feet.

“Asra!”

“Look out!”

Before Asra can react, one of the sheer curtains hanging from the ceiling drop down. Quick like a whip, it whirls around one of Asra’s legs, as if he doesn’t even have a barrier up at all, and then yanks him upside-down.

He yelps. Faust falls out his scarf, and he scrambles to catch her before she hits the ground.

The curtain drags him up to the ceiling—where he hangs, suspended by one foot, holding a writhing snake, looking stunned but totally unharmed. Inanna pads over to stand below Asra, looking up at him and tilting her head to the side.

The monkey, having stopped its shrieking, makes pleased cooing noises and rubs its hands together.

Inanna stands on her hind legs long enough to sniff at Asra’s fluffy white hair.

He giggles, momentarily distracted from trying to stop his writhing snake from escaping his grasp. “That—stop it. That tickles! Faust—Faust this is not _fun_ , we are not playing a game, stop it—”

A low, rough woman’s voice comes wafting down the stairs at the far side of the room, amplified with magic. “Lady Aisha, that child is the loudest burglar that’s ever broken into my shop.”

“I apologize. I would assure you that I raised him better, but…”

“Never had kids. Can’t judge.” She clears her throat, and then, louder, calls, “Alright, Zaru, you’ve had your fun. Let him down, we don’t have all day.”

The monkey coos in reply, before letting go of whatever it yanked and darting along the rafters towards the stairs.

Asra falls to the floor next to Inanna with a heavy _thud_.

As Muriel and Kai rush forward to make sure he’s fine—and he waves them off, embarrassed—the woman from upstairs continues, “Come on up, then, stove salamander’s been keeping lunch warm for everyone.”

Muriel helps Asra stand. He starts to pull him towards the door—but Asra doesn’t budge, and neither does Kai. Muriel pulls again, a little more firmly, only for Kai to square her shoulders, stand a little taller, and start walking towards the stairs.

Asra and Muriel glance at each other. Asra shrugs, then follows Kai.

When Muriel hesitates a little longer than he should, Inanna butts his hand with her head. He scratches her between the ears, letting her calm him as she always does, before joining Asra and Kai at the foot of the stairs.

“I’ll go first,” Muriel tells them, and takes the stairs two at a time before they can disagree.

At the top of the narrow stairs is the shop’s small, cozy second floor. Unlike downstairs, the windows are all opened and the curtains shifting gently in the cool breeze coming off the ocean in the distance. There are decorations on the walls that seem mystical in nature, but there are a few comfortable looking chairs, and a couch. The walls are painted in light colours, and the curtains that separate the sleeping area from the main room are made of beads that glitter in the sunlight. There are many empty pots, and a few that have dry, sickly looking plants in them, drooping or slowly crumbling away.

In the kitchen there is a short, broad-shouldered woman. She has long hair a lot like Kai’s, only grey and white, and the monkey from downstairs is perched on her shoulders. Her back’s to the stairs as she bends down to take a heavy-looking pot out of the oven, the smell of curry spices wafting through the air.

Asra’s mother sits on one of the chairs, drinking tea. She smiles warmly when she sees Muriel.

“Muriel,” she says, putting her cup on her saucer. “It’s always so good to see you. You’re looking well these days.”

Before Muriel can grumble out his customary _nice to see you too_ , the woman who must be Kai’s aunt turns around, and whistles, her eyebrows shooting up.

“Damn you’re big,” she says as she slowly makes her way to the coffee table. “Should have just let _you_ swing this thing around.” She deposits the pot with a grunt, and then unbends, holding her lower back and hissing.

The monkey coos at her, and helpfully keeps her hair out of her face. Muriel can see now that she’s shaved half of her head, exposing an ear dotted with glimmering gemstone earrings. He can also see that she bears more than a passing resemblance to Kai—their eyes are the same burnt umber, and what differences there are in the shapes of their faces seem more due to the lines of age than anything else.

He… doesn’t _feel_ anything from her. He narrows his eyes at her, and continues to block the stairway behind him.

“Relax, kid.” She reaches up to tap one of her earrings—indicating a deep green, highly reflective stone. “Just like to keep what I’m feeling to myself.”

He glowers a little—but then he feels Kai right behind him, and he takes a step to the side, allowing her through.

The woman pauses, then. She looks Kai up and down, her expression unreadable.

Kai stands at the top of the stairs and wrings her hands together. All her emotions feel still, at the moment—as if they are all crammed together at the crest of a wave, waiting for the moment where they all come crashing down.

No one says anything for several long, _long_ , minutes. Muriel doesn’t even think Kai _breathes_.

Eventually, Kai’s aunt says softly, “Shit. Here you are, then.”

Kai lets out a breath. She wavers a bit on the stairs, and her brow furrows, but Muriel detects only a minor note of confusion making its way through the mess of her emotions at the moment.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Let me have a look at you.”

Kai steps forward, and gathers her skirts and gives a deep, formal bow, her hair falling over her shoulder and the ends of it gathering on the floor in front of her.

“It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Kalani, daughter of Ailani, the Tempest who raged at the whim of our Queen, and Lopaka, he with the trade wind tongue. I—”

“Oh for fuck’s—I know who you _are,_ girl.”

Kai stops mid-sentence. She hovers there, still bowing, though Muriel watches her head move a little as she peeks through the curtain of her hair.

Her aunt’s lips twist. “You’re going fall over if you keep that up.”

Kai stands, uncertainly. She hovers again, making fists in her skirts, before Asra moves to stand at her side, scowling.

“You could have let her _finish_.”

“And _you_ could have knocked, but instead you chose breaking and entering.” Her scolding only seems half-hearted, and her lips twist into a little smirk, as if in spite of herself. “We’d be here ‘til sunset listening to my family tree, and I didn’t run halfway across the world because I wanted to hear _that_ ever again.”

Asra narrows his eyes at the aunt, and then glances at Kai. “… Is it really that long?”

Kai looks down at her hands. “… I start getting them all mixed up once I get past great-great-grandparents.”

Her aunt cackles at that. The monkey joins in, high and shrill, and Inanna groans at Muriel’s side.

“There’s hope for you yet.” She sticks her hand out, and Kai stares at it a moment before reaching out and taking it. Her aunt shakes it twice, like Muriel’s seen traders do. “Call me Jay.”

“… Aunt Jay?”

“Sure. You met Zaru already—don’t worry he hasn’t bit anyone in weeks—and I think you know your own mother in law so I’ll skip that particular introduction. Your guard dogs are Muriel and Asra, and the wolf and snake are?”

Muriel clears his throat. “Inanna.”

Asra continues to watch Jay with open suspicion. “Faust.”

“Great. Now we can all sit down, enjoy a lovely meal, and you can tell me all about why you wanted to see me.”

Kai and her aunt busy themselves with gathering an assortment of mismatched bowls and spoons out of the cupboards, while Asra sheepishly slinks over to the sofa. He sits on the side nearest his mother, who levels him with a severe expression—one that Muriel can feel she doesn’t really have her heart in. Not that you could tell by looking at her.

“Breaking in, Asra. _Really_.”

“I didn’t touch anything. And it was important!”

“Where did you even _learn_ a spell like that, anyway?”

“How did _you_ know we were coming?”

Aisha takes a sip of her tea, fond amusement seeping into her mood and her smile. “Whatever you’ve done to your invisibility spell this time, your footprints start singing about an hour after you’ve left.”

Asra’s brow furrows. He opens his mouth—and then his shoulders slump, and he leans back into the couch. “Oh.”

“And you were in such a hurry that you put back the spell book in question… upside down.”

A curl of embarrassment escapes Asra, and he starts to blush a little. “Dad came back from his workshop early.”

Aisha places her tea on the coffee table, then leans forward a puts a hand on Asra’s knee. “We’re both very proud of you, trying to help Kalani. But you know you could have just asked us for help, too.”

Asra’s blush deepens. He squirms, and a little streak of worry and uncertainty works its way through his embarrassment. “She wanted to do it herself,” Asra says, glancing over at Kai and her aunt.

They all settle down to eat lunch—Kai, having insisted that there was plenty of room, crammed between Muriel and Asra on the couch, and Jay and Aisha sitting in the chairs. The curry is rich and well-spiced, with lentils and a hefty portion of rice, and it tastes so good that Muriel isn’t even embarrassed when Kai’s aunt takes his empty bowl and refills it for him.

“Aisha’s told me the gist of it,” Jay says eventually, when Kai doesn’t offer anything on her own. “Said you went to school for a bit—the Aevard academy, in the Swallowtail pass, right?”

Kai nods, immediately brightening at the mention of her school. “I was top of my class in Botany,” she offers, uncertainly.

“Botany?” Jay whistles. “I’m damn impressed you could learn _anything_ in a stuffy tower in the middle of nowhere, let alone making shit grow.”

Kai _beams_. “I had an excellent teacher,” she says.

“And your other classes? The other prime elements? Illusions, magical theory…”

Kai deflates a little. “I excelled in all my theoretical classes. But I… I was not instructed in the other prime elements. And I could never see the illusions I was supposed to copy, so they chose not to continue my education in that field.”

Jay examines her closely for a moment. Muriel watches as, in the space of a blink, her monkey turns bright orange, and her entire face turns fluorescent pink and her features twist into something utterly demonic. “Can’t see illusions at all?”

Kai shakes her head, unphased by the sudden change. “I can hear them a little, but I always hear the original sound underneath.”

She narrows her eyes. They start to glow a bright, unseemly orange, and Muriel feels himself shrinking back just by reflex. “And no good at the other primals? Wind? Water? _Fire_?”

A spike of panic shoots through Kai. “No,” she insists, with a firmness that surprises Muriel. “My professors had me focus my studies in earth magic.”

Jay snorts. The illusion drops, much to Muriel’s relief, and she takes up her cup of tea. He watches as she cups it in her hands until steam begins to rise from the cup, clearly rewarming it with magic, before taking a sip.

“Your father obviously took you out of school before your exams.”

Once again, Muriel feels a wave of shame and anxiety rise from Kai at the mention of the exams.

“Mind sharing _why_ with the class?”

Kai opens her mouth, then closes it again. She does this three more times before Jay sighs, and returns her cup of tea to the coffee table.

“How old _are_ you, exactly?”

“Seventeen, ma’am.”

“ _Seventeen_.” Kai’s aunt rubs her temples and mutters a few curses under her breath. “Someone should throw your old man into a volcano.”

Muriel can’t get a clear read on all the warring emotions that run through Kai at a lightning pace in response to that statement. Her eyes go wide, and she opens her mouth as if she is going to say something, and then promptly bites her lip.

“So _serious,_ girl. Don’t worry, we’ll fix that. So, I’m going to guess—and feel free to stop me if I’m wrong—your old man shows up out of the blue one day and does something that gets you kicked out of school. Probably had a job lined up for you back home, one that would give him more prestige and one step closer to the Queen. But he needed the school to sign a fancy piece of paper saying you passed everything with flying colours, and they, being a stuffy magic school in the middle of nowhere, wouldn’t do it?”

Kai shrinks further into the couch.

_Expelled_ , Muriel thinks. He glances over at Jay again, but both her expression and her emotions are unreadable.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Asra assures Kai, glaring daggers at Jay.

“Just making an _educated_ guess.” Jay shrugs. “So he doesn’t get what he wants, and decides to recoup his losses by marrying you off somewhere far away. Preferably to a magician so he can pretend you met through school and _fell in love_ , just to save face at court. Somewhere he can get a half-decent trade deal out of the whole thing. And, eventually, grandchildren with ties to a ruling body, thereby cementing his importance as a diplomat to the region in question.”

Both Asra and Kai go very, very still at the mention of grandchildren. Aisha worries her fingertips over her teacup.

“Trust me, I know his type. You’re _far_ from done with him.”

“Kalani,” Aisha interrupts.

Kai looks up at her, startled.

“I know we haven’t had much of a chance to speak these last few weeks,” she continues, setting aside her own cup. “Salim and I are thrilled you and Asra have been getting along so well. Truly. But I want you to know that we tried to find a way to have you stay here _without_ marrying Asra, first.”

Kai is honestly, genuinely surprised. “Really?” she asks, her voice impossibly soft.

Aisha smiles fondly. “My dear, one look at your father and we knew he would drop you off wherever there was the most gain for him, regardless of your happiness. And Asra wanted so badly to help you…”

Kai glances at Asra, who is busy looking at the ceiling. “That _was_ you,” she says. “At the docks. With the tarot cards.”

He clears his throat and shrugs. “I didn’t like how he talked to you.”

“What was my reading?”

Embarrassment rises from Asra, and his cheeks flush. “I… don’t remember.”

“So when I discovered that you and Asra were searching for your blood relatives, I thought I would… ensure that your aunt wasn’t any worse.”

“Jury’s still out on that,” Jay quips.

Aisha smiles, and picks up her cup of tea once again. “Our first meeting was… interesting enough,” she admits over the rim, before pausing to take a sip. “But I believe your aunt to be… very different from your father.”

Jay snorts. “I’m different from _all_ the gulls shitting in Manahea’s court, right Kalani?”

Kai seems confused that she was even asked. “I don’t know,” she answers.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to court.”

Jay stares at her. “That’s ridiculous. You must have been—a Sun-sighted girl-child, from _our_ line, practically _radiating_ —and she _never_ presented you at court?”

Kai shifts uneasily. “I… I am told there were complications, after I was born. And she… she never recovered.”

Jay’s expression suddenly goes still, and hard. She doesn’t seem to breathe—her gaze turns distant, and even Zaru turns and regards her, his red face furrowing in concern. He hesitates a moment before starting to fret with her hair.

Jay blinks rapidly, and then waves him off before standing. Her monkey clambers over to her other shoulder as she carries the empty stew pot back to the kitchen, muttering something Muriel can’t hear along the way. She deposits it on the counter and then leans there, her back to them, while Zaru makes soft cooing noises and runs his claws through her hair.

It… might be for the best, that her emotions are shielded.

Aisha clears her throat, returning her teacup to the table and resting her hands in her lap. “Kalani,” she says, “on the subject of your magical education—”

“I’m teaching her.”

Muriel isn’t sure who, out of the guests sitting around the coffee table, is more surprised by that statement. After the initial _stillness_ that always signals true, honest surprise, Muriel feels a spike of alarm rise from both Asra and Aisha, but that stillness persists in Kai’s reaction, even as she turns to stare, wide-eyed at Jay. Too shocked to even react.

Jay has turned back to face them, all traces of grief gone from her expression. There is only a determined glint in her eye as she regards Kai, working her jaw back and forth.

“You _what_?” Aisha stammers. “I thought—you said—”

“I know what I said,” Jay snaps.

Zaru chitters, and it sounds a lot like scolding to Muriel.

Jay closes her eyes. She takes a single, deep breath. “Kalani.”

Kai jumps in place.

“How old were you when your father shipped you off?”

Kai swallows. “Six.”

Jay runs a hand over her face, and mutters something under her breath. After a moment, she crosses her arms over her chest and looks down at Kai, brow furrowed. “You wouldn’t know this,” she says, her voice low and measured, as if she would quite like to start throwing things around the room but is restraining herself, “but in Manahea, mothers teach their daughters magic. So my mother learned from her mother, and from her mother before her, and her mother before her. There are spells rooted in traditions and family bloodlines that stretch back to the oldest stories of our people travelling the seas, before we ever came to call the islands home. They are recorded in no book, written on no monument. They are sung only in the songs that our mothers sing to us in our cradles, as they rock us to sleep. They are remembered by the deepest corals swaying in the ocean, the smoke that rises from slumbering volcanos, and the roots of the oldest trees in ancient, impassible forests.”

Muriel can feel Kai’s confusion and unease slowly begin to wane. He can feel a tiny thread of _hope_ begin to well up in her—warm and bright, and _so_ tentative. The weakest ember of a candle’s flame.

“I’m not your mother. I wasn’t the perfect student she was. I’m a poor substitute—in more ways than one—but I will pass on to you what I know, as long as you want to learn.”

Kai stands all at once. She tries three times to speak, before immediately bursting into tears. She nearly jumps over the coffee table in her haste to get to her aunt and throw her arms around her, displacing the now-shrieking monkey.

Jay freezes. But Kai, latched onto her, just keeps crying, so Jay awkwardly returns the hug, patting Kai on the back. “Alright,” she says, “get it—get it all out now, why don’t you.”

It takes Kai a few moments, but she does manage to reduce her crying to sniffling, and then to untangle herself from her aunt. “I would be honoured to have you teach me, Aunt Jay.”

Jay gives her a wry smile in return. “I gathered. Now, your first lesson.”

“Already?”

Jay starts to steer Kai towards the stairs. “No time like the present.”

Muriel glances over at Asra—and he is already standing up, worry written all over his features, so Muriel follows suit, Inanna padding along behind him.

Jay leads Kai out the back door of the shop. Asra and Muriel follow, and then stop dead in their tracks.

There is a small, utterly overcrowded garden out back, full of plants that appear to be dead.

There is a muddy pool of water at the center, surrounded by dried, rapidly browning flowers. A single walking path of smooth stones winds a meandering line around the garden, hardly wide enough at times for even Kai to stand comfortably. It is smothered on all sides by overgrown and dead rose bushes, twisted and dried husks that Muriel thinks were once herbs, and a few patches of stubborn but sickly-looking lichens. There are weak-looking berry bushes all around the tall garden walls, and several sickly-looking trees, two of which have yellowed leaves and the others only bare branches.

Strange, twisted stone figurines peer out from the dying foliage. They look gaunt, and hungry, their expressions desperate.

Kai stands stock still, and stares at it all with a slightly horrified expression.

“Huh,” Jay muses. “Thought it would rain this week for sure.”

“I don’t…” Kai stops herself, and takes a deep breath. “Is this _your_ garden?”

“Me? Hell no. Black thumb and all that.” Jay puts her hands on her hips and _tuts_. “Oh, damn turtle’s run off again. It was my wife’s. Late wife.”

“The turtle?”

“Hah! That turtle doesn’t belong to _anyone_. No, girl, the garden. Always told her it was silly not to work a renewable power source into her spells but she just kept saying I was ‘crazy’ and ‘could manage to water a few plants every once in a while.’ Guess not.”

Kai takes another deep breath. And then another. And another—until Jay clasps her shoulder, and Kai jumps a little.

“Alright, miss _only good at botany_. You get this garden back into shape, and I’ll show you how to keep it going forever, with or without you.”

Kai nods. Muriel watches her face, and sees her horror slowly being replaced by a calculated determination as she gives herself a moment to survey her new project.

“This garden was overcrowded to begin with. There’s far too many plants in here for a space of this size. We’ll have to remove all the dead ones to see what we _can_ save. Which, if I had to guess, would be two of the trees, and the bushes along the wall… Everything else, however…”

Abruptly, she turns to Muriel and Asra, and smiles shyly. “I… have a lot of work to do. I think I could use a couple pairs of hands, if I haven’t taken up enough of your time already.”

Faust, perched on Asra’s shoulders, wiggles back and forth happily.

Asra laughs. “You don’t _have_ hands, Faust.”

Kai tucks her hair behind one ear. “I’d love her help, too.”

At Muriel’s side, Inanna’s ears perk up, and she paws at the ground, before looking back up at Kai.

Kai smiles. “And Inanna too, of course.”

Asra looks sidelong at Muriel with a crooked grin. “I don’t have anywhere else to be. How about you, Muri?”

Muriel rolls his eyes. “I can help.”

Kai beams at them both. “Okay,” she says, rolling up her sleeves and turning back to the garden. “Let’s get started, shall we?”


	3. Just Friends

It takes nearly two weeks just to clear the garden out.

Muriel helps as often as he can. He’s the only one who can lift the dead trees, though that doesn’t stop Asra from trying with spells he’s half-mastered. And it’s faster to get rid of all the dead plants if he just carries them out into the street. After all the neighbours have happily taken all the free firewood and kindling they can carry, Muriel borrows a cart and brings in as much rich soil in from the forest as he can, while Asra helps Kai sort out the new layout.

Or, as Muriel sees the minute he and the overburdened cart turn the last corner to the shop, Kai decides on the layout while Asra lounges on top of the tall stone wall that surrounds the garden. On his back, one leg hanging over the side, and his hat over his eyes.

Muriel can hear Kai’s voice through the wall, muffled as it is. “I _think_ this was supposed to be a reflecting pool. Before the uh, turtle got to it.”

It takes Asra a moment to respond. When he does, his words are slow, and his tone lethargic. “What’s it supposed to reflect?”

“The _sky_ , silly. The moon, the sun, the stars… It’s a very easy way to enhance rituals performed here. Not that you could sit anywhere the way this garden was laid out to begin with.”

Asra hums. “Sounds nice.”

Muriel brings the cart to a halt beside the wall. He stands under Asra and scowls up at him, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Get down before you fall.”

Asra doesn’t even react. “Missed you too, Muri.”

He hears a scrambling sound, and then Kai grunting once or twice before her head appears above the wall. “Hello Muriel! You’re back sooner than I expected.”

Muriel glowers up at her. “Stop climbing the wall! It’s dangerous!”

She gives him a bashful smile. “Sorry,” she says, before her head disappears again.

Muriel sighs, shakes his head, and grabs the handles of the cart again. Before he can go anywhere, he hears the slip of a bare foot on stone, and Kai _yelps._

He drops the cart again, heart hammering in his chest. When he looks up, Asra is sitting up and leaning over the side of the wall—but then he hears Kai’s nervous laughter, and sees Asra’s shoulders relax.

“Whoops!” she says, still laughing. “Nearly slipped!”

Muriel scowls at the wall. “Stay there,” he says.

He can feel Kai’s embarrassment as her laughter fades. “Okay.”

Muriel finds the handholds that Asra carved out of the side of the wall—which got him an earful from Jay—and he’s at the top of the wall as quick as he can. He sits at the top, and peers down to see Kai, still hanging onto the top of the wall. Her hair is tied up in a bun, and there’s dirt under her nails and smudged on her forehead.

She is biting her lip to hide a smile. Her embarrassment vanishes, and he can feel that she is… happy. Happy to see him.

Muriel helps her back up onto the top of the wall to sit between himself and Asra, ignoring his burning cheeks.

“Thank you, Muriel.” She dusts off her pants, then glances over her shoulder to the cart Muriel has abandoned, and the wolf at its side. “Hello to you too, Inanna. Oh! Muriel! You brought so much!”

Muriel takes a deep breath, but the late afternoon air is still too warm to cool his face down. “It’s a big garden.”

“No that’s great! I think this is just as much as I need! Thank you!” Then she squints, and starts to try to turn around on the wall. “And that bag, is that…”

Asra reaches over, and steadies her with a hand on her back. “Let’s try not to make Muri panic anymore today, Kai.”

“Sorry. Did you bring something else? Is that bag full of…”

Muriel clears his throat. “Eggshells. For compost.”

Kai beams up at him. “Have you been saving them up all week? Muriel that’s so sweet of you.”

He looks up, and wishes the sun would go ahead and set already. “… Usually just throw them out.”

“Did you get sunburnt? The aloe vera plant perked up yesterday, I think we could risk a trimming.”

“… S’fine.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll just go get it now.”

“Wait!”

But Kai has already scrambled down the wall. She lands harmlessly on the dusty earth, and then vanishes through the shop’s back door.

Muriel glances up at the second floor window. Kai’s aunt leans one elbow on the sill, smoking her foul-smelling herbs, watching Muriel and Asra on the wall.

She’s smiling. When Muriel scowls at her, she winks and takes another drag.

Muriel sees Kai run past her aunt, and hears the disgusted noise she makes. “Must you smoke that in the house? It smells _awful_.”

Jay rolls her eyes. “Stars, girl, you sound older than _I_ am.” But she extinguishes her joint on the windowsill before stepping back and letting the curtain fall.

Muriel glances back at Asra—who is smiling at him, cheeks dimpling, as if he knows some big secret Muriel doesn’t.

“W-what?”

Asra tilts his head to the side. “Just happy to see you making friends, that’s all.”

Muriel tries his best to scowl. “Am not.”

Asra laughs. He swings his legs over the side of the wall and jumps down, landing on the street with a flare of magic to protect him.

“Am not!”

“Sure, sure. Can you tell Kalani I’ll come back to walk her home?”

“Where are you going?”

“ _Trade meeting_ ,” he answers with obvious disdain. He stops to pet Inanna, who leans into his hand happily, before waving and taking off at a jog down the street. “See you!”

Muriel glowers after Asra, before climbing down the wall himself and bringing the cart around to the front of the shop. He pokes his head in the front door, sees that Kai and her aunt are still upstairs, and then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small satchel of protection herbs. He leaves it tucked into the corner of the doorstep, where it won’t be disturbed, and then turns back to the cart.

As he’s bringing the soil through the shop and out to the garden, Kai slowly makes her way downstairs again. But she doesn’t say anything—and she seems suddenly subdued, in quiet contemplation, so he lets her be until he brings in the last sack, the one full of eggshells, and dumps it on Kai’s budding compost pile.

He steps back into the shop—and there’s Kai, still sitting on the bottom step, turning the broken-off aloe leaf over and over in her hands.

He clears his throat, and she startles, jumping to her feet.

“Your face!”

She actually reaches up—and he freezes in place, torn between stepping back and not wanting to hurt her feelings—but she looks up at him, and her expression falls just a little. A tiny, _tiny_ wave of misery escapes her.

“Oh, Asra got it already.”

Muriel shifts his weight, watching her hands fall, and her gaze with them.

When the silence stretches a little too long even for him, he says, “Didn’t burn.”

Kai sighs, and that tiny wave of misery spikes. “You don’t have to lie to me to make me feel better, Muriel.”

“… What?”

She sits down on the bottom stair. Her misery stews a bit, growing strong enough that Muriel starts to feel it in his own chest.

He is struck by the urge to sit with her. Shake her out of it. Almost does, but he’s too big to sit next to her on the stairs.

All of a sudden, Kai takes a deep breath, and, still looking down at her hands, says, “Just because Asra and I got married, doesn’t mean you two can’t still… you know.”

No. No he _doesn’t_ know. “What?”

Kai buries her face in her hands. “I know you’re in love with each other,” she says into her palms.

Muriel stops breathing.

… What?

What?

_What?_

“And Asra only married me to help me,” Kai continues on, her voice still muffled by her hands. “We don’t… we don’t do anything. We even take turns sleeping on the floor every night. We’re just friends. So you two can just… go on like you were before.”

Muriel’s chest feels tight. His heart feels like it’s trying to climb out through his throat, battering his whole body on the way out.

She knows.

How does she _know?_

Does _Asra_ know?

“I’m so sorry I made all this so complicated. Maybe if I wasn’t so useless I could have seen it without my aunt telling me, and I could have just said something from the beginning, and we could have avoided this whole misunderstanding entirely.”

Her _aunt_ knows?!

Her misery has been steadily growing this entire time—and it feels like that time Inanna got trapped in a sinkhole, after the monsoon, and he had to go in and get her. And while Kai is sitting in the middle of it, unmoving, steadily sinking deeper, Muriel is on the edge of it, feeling it suck at his ankles, the forest fire of his own panic burning him alive.

If her aunt knows, then Asra…

Muriel turns on his heel and leaves.

“Muriel?”

He ignores Kai. He ignores Inanna’s curious whine. He storms out of the shop, not even waiting for Inanna to catch up. He leaves the borrowed cart and charges directly for the alley across the street.

“Muriel!”

Does Asra know? Has Asra known this whole time?

If he knows, then…

“Muriel!” Kai calls, her voice further away. “Muriel I’m sorry! Come back!”

He runs.

He runs as fast as he can through the back alleys of Vesuvia. Through familiar back ways and all the shaded places he knows will hide him from the people who live here, who walk and laugh and talk in the streets. Who would see him and be frightened, as he barrels from the magic shop to the city gates, his throat and eyes burning, his hands clenched into fists.

_Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me._

Asra knows, Asra _knows_ and he went and got married anyway—

He does not see the boxes until he crashes over them. He falls over them and they splinter under his weight, his foot and elbow breaking clean through two of the flimsy wooden boxes. He scrambles to right himself, kicking the box off his foot, and pauses, finally, to rub at his eyes with the back of his arm.

He’s bleeding through his hide boot, a long cut along the side of his foot. It stings, and then it starts to _really_ hurt, and he tries to let that ground him. Tries to focus on that, and not the tears running down his face.

Inanna whines, and tries to lick the blood from his foot.

He shakes her off, and limps a few steps down the alley.

She whines again. And again—and as he keeps limping, he realises that she isn’t following.

When he turns back, she is half-turned herself; back the way they came, though she’s still watching him. Ears forward, eyes wide with worry.

“We’re going home,” he chokes out, his voice even rougher than normal.

Inanna sits down in the alley.

Muriel exhales, rough and ragged. “I’d like her better than me, too.”

Inanna’s ears flatten against her skull, and she lets out an annoyed _huff._

“I’m going home,” he says, turning and limping down the alleyway.

He has to stop at the end and lean on the wall—and he curses, under his breath, at the pain in his foot and… and everything else, he supposes.

When he reaches down, Inanna is there at his side. Her rough fur coarse on his hands, leaning into his touch.

He swallows the apology he doesn’t give her. And then he takes a deep breath, and starts limping home.

 

It’s getting dark, and Asra can’t find Kalani.

He showed up at the shop, and she wasn’t waiting for him. Knocked on the back door, over and over, until Jay opened it, her monkey on her shoulder and picking something out of her teeth with a sewing needle.

“What?”

He’d stared at her. “I’m… here to take Kalani home. She normally waits outside…?”

“Oh yeah.” She had taken a moment to pick at her teeth further, and then pause to examine the needle. “She left.”

“She _what_.”

“You got cotton in your ears or what, kid? I said she left. Ran off after your big friend, all in a panic. Wonder what it was about…”

“She—she ran off? And you _let_ her?”

“I’m not her mother.”

“You’re her _aunt_!”

“And?” Jay had absently tapped the needle against her chin, while Zaru scowled at Asra and chittered under his breath. “She’ll find her way back eventually, kid. The palace is pretty hard to miss.”

“She could get mugged! Or fall into the ocean!”

“ _Relax,_ kid. Bet you ten silver she’s already back home safe and sound.”

Asra’s tried tracing Muriel’s usual route. Through back alleys and down narrow, shaded paths—but he doesn’t catch a glimpse of her, or even feel her when he casts spells looking for her. He grew up darting around street corners with Muriel, avoiding guards and angry shopkeepers alike—he knows this city like the back of his hand.

But… it’s a _big_ city. And he has no idea where Kalani would _go_.

He spends an hour circling around Muriel’s usual route, looking into open stalls and clambering over garden walls, before it starts to rain. Slow, heavy, thick drops, that soon turn from two or three on his head to a heavy, skin-pelting storm. He hides under a canvas shade, conserving his magic for searching, and tries to _think_. Just… _think._

Maybe she’s with Muriel. Maybe she wanted to go feed the chickens.

_Friend?_ Faust asks.

“We’ll find her,” Asra assures her with a confidence he doesn’t feel.

He finds a barrel someone’s put out to collect rainwater, already overflowing. He drags it back towards the awning, ignoring the rain pelting his face, and then spends a painful minute waiting for the water to draw completely, utterly still.

He’s never tried this spell before, but…

He closes his eyes and tries to remember the Magician’s words. Sometimes it’s hard when he wakes up, but sometimes, if he just focuses…

It takes no effort at all to picture the strange fox, with his smug grin and clever, otherworldly eyes. _Why do you always make this so hard on yourself, Asra?_

When he opens his eyes, and looks down at the barrel, the still water looks up into the shadow of the tree making up Muriel’s hut. The image is distorted occasionally—ripples breaking up the surface as single drips fall from the branches and roots above. But the puddle, or whatever he’s seeing through, is stable enough for the spell to hold.

He can hear the steady, constant sound of an axe breaking wood.

Of _course_ Muriel would chop wood in the rain.

“Muri!” he calls. “Muri!”

The sound stops. Asra waits, breath in his throat, until Muriel’s face appears above the puddle.

“… What?”

“Is Kalani with you?”

Muriel’s brow furrows in confusion. “No.”

“I went to get her but she wasn’t at the shop. Her aunt said that she ran off after you so I hoped…”

Muriel’s eyes widen, and the colour drains from his face.

“Did you two have a fight?”

Muriel moves to step away from the puddle.

“Wait! It’s okay Muri, I’m not mad. I just—we need to find her, okay? She doesn’t know her way back and it’s pouring rain and—and—”

Muriel mutters something under his breath. The rainfall from above distorts it further, and Asra almost loses concentration on the spell.

“What?”

“I’m coming. Wait—wait there.”

“Meet you by the gates,” Asra says instead, and takes off in that direction.

Muriel meets him there so quickly that Asra’s sure he must have run the whole way. Inanna is with him, rain-soaked and miserable, and Muriel immediately holds out his cloak for her to hide under as he pauses to catch his breath.

“Did you bring your runes?” Asra asks.

Muriel only nods. He’s pale, and the line of his jaw is drawn tighter than normal.

It’s not til Asra tries to tug him towards the closest awning, and Muriel _hisses_ , that Asra realises something’s wrong.

“Your foot!” he cries, seeing now that he’s barefoot, and wearing bandages soaked through with blood. “What—what happened?”

Muriel clearly tries not to look embarrassed, but Asra’s known him too long for that. “Tripped.”

“On what? A sword?”

Muriel mutters something under his breath.

“For—sit down and let me heal that before you bleed out.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, _no_?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not _fine_ , it’s going to get infected—”

Muriel shoves past Asra, nearly knocking him over. “Let’s just find Kai.”

“I’d rather find her _without_ you passing out from blood loss!”

Muriel doesn’t even stop; he just keeps limping away, one lumbering step at a time. “Why.”

Asra lets out a strangled noise. Then he walks quickly to catch up with Muriel—even limping, he moves fast. “I don’t know, Muri, because you’re my best friend? Because I can’t carry you even if I use magic and you passing out in the street _might_ be a minor inconvenience? Because I don’t want to explain to Kalani when we _do_ find her that you were too stubborn to let me help you and that’s why—”

“She likes Kai better,” Muriel snaps.

Asra stares at the cloak blocking Muriel’s face, his mouth hanging open as they walk.

Muriel…

Muriel’s _never_ interrupted him.

“You should know. You married her.”

Is he…

Is he imagining that bitter tone?

Asra’s steps slow, until they stop entirely.

Muriel’s never warmed up to anyone so fast. Not anyone who wasn’t an animal. They’ve only known Kalani a few weeks, and now Muriel’s _this_ worked up that she’s missing, when he didn’t even want her there in the first place…

“You like her,” Asra blurts.

Several long paces ahead now, Muriel slows to a stop, but does not turn around.

“You… you _like_ her.”

Inanna, still at Muriel’s side, looks up at him and whines.

Muriel doesn’t even budge. He just stands there, his cloak being steadily battered by the rain, facing away from Asra.

“Muri,” Asra says, “I—I didn’t _really_ marry her, not like that. If you like her, that’s—that’s great! It’s great!”

He really wishes Muriel would just… turn around. Say something. Maybe roll his eyes, or that weird pout he does—

But he doesn’t. He just stands there, his back still to Asra.

And Asra just keeps talking, talking over the sound of his own heart in his chest, his pulse in his ears. “Muriel, you’re my best friend. If you want to… you know. Do stuff with her, or whatever. Whatever people do when they—”

“If I let you heal my foot, will you _stop talking_?”

Asra can’t help but laugh. It’s nervous, and too-loud, but it makes Muriel turn, _finally_ , and glance over his shoulder just long enough for Asra to see his beet-red face, before he limps over to a couple of heavy wooden boxes on the side of the street.

Asra jogs up and joins Muriel, kneeling in front of him. When he reaches to take his foot between his hands, however, Muriel jerks it out of the way. Asra looks up at Muriel’s flushed face, finding that Muriel is still not quite meeting his gaze.

“Never tell Kai about this.”

Asra laughs, his own cheeks warm. “Yeah. Okay.”

Asra makes Muriel stay seated a while, after his foot is healed. He sits on a barrel nearby, his heels resting on the rim and his elbows resting on his knees. Muriel keeps looking at his hands, his brows furrowed, and Asra finds that he can’t _not_ look at Muriel.

He’s happy for Muriel. Really. He and Kalani— _Kai_ —would be great together. Muriel’s so gentle and protective and Kai is just so curious about the world, they could really help each other come out of their shells.

It would be great. They would be _great_.

Great. Together.

“Asra?”

Asra jumps. Muriel’s scowling at him, now, like he’s said his name a few times and Asra hasn’t heard.

“Great!” Asra blurts. “You’re—I’m—everything’s great. Except Kala—Kaila— _Kai_ being missing, that’s not great, but now your foot’s great, so it won’t get gangrene and fall off, sorry, not talking. You were saying?”

Muriel doesn’t—he just reaches for his belt, and pulls his runes out of his pouch.

Asra clears his throat. “Good idea.”

Asra stays crouched on top of the barrel, shielding them from the rain with a barrier, while Muriel casts runes on the ground. Asra’s never gotten the hang of reading them, himself—mostly he keeps at it because it still makes Muriel laugh, sometimes. So he watches as Muriel tosses the runes, and then stares at them a while, his expression blank, before scowling and then picking them up again.

He does this three more times, each time drawing more confusion from him than the last, before he looks up at Asra and says, “She’s at the palace.”

Asra’s shoulders slump with relief. “Well you could have just _said_ —”

“She’s not alone.”

 

Muriel hasn’t snuck into the palace with Asra in years. Not since they built his hut in the woods together. It felt strange at the time, choosing to live so far from Asra—but his parents kept hinting that Muriel should _stay_ more often, and trying to buy him things, and he just…

Asra and Kai have their own set of rooms, now. But Muriel’s shoulders won’t fit through the window, so Asra has to sneak him in through the servants’ stairs.

“Don’t worry,” Asra whispers, opening the door from the stairs to the hallway. “I fixed the singing problem. No one will even know you’ve been here.”

Muriel shrugs his shoulders a few times. “It’s itchy.”

“That’s uh. New. I’m working on it. Stay close, okay? If you get too far away I’ll lose the spell.”

He stays as close as he can without stepping on Asra’s feet. The hall is eerily quiet—but it’s late, and if he remembers correctly it’s about time for the servants to eat their own meals, or to finish up whatever tasks are required of them before they are done for the night. There’s not much reason to be up in this wing at this time of day, when the people who live here want privacy.

Probably no reason for Asra to make Muriel invisible, then—but he’ll take itchy skin rather than being seen up here.

“Whoever’s with her,” Asra whispers, “there’s a rope she knows to pull if there’s trouble. And she hasn’t yet. So there might not be trouble?”

Or whoever’s in there with her has killed her, Muriel thinks. But the hall is too empty, and too quiet, and he’s too worried his voice will carry, and also it would probably make Asra panic, so he keeps that to himself.

They get to the door to Asra and Kai’s room without trouble—Asra unlocks it with a spell, and Muriel strains but he can’t hear anything but he can feel… something… Kai’s in there for sure, teeth-grinding nervousness and worry radiating from her, but there’s something else in there that is feeling… curiosity? Contentedness? Not human, certainly.

Then Asra opens the door, and the only thing coming out of that room is a pure, overwhelming _rage_.

Kai shouts, “Wait!” just as a tiny black blur launches itself at Asra’s face.

Asra throws up a barrier—dropping the invisibility spell on Muriel—just in time to stop the world’s smallest, angriest cat from ripping his face to shreds. It’s smaller than one of Muriel’s hands, and has pitch-black fur and eyes that glow like hot coals, its ear flat against its skull and all its fur on end as it _yowls_ , infuriated at being denied its target.

Muriel has seriously never felt anything so angry in his life. He actually takes a step back, before he remembers that the cat is smaller than his foot, and on the other side of Asra’s barrier.

“What the—”

Before Asra can even finish, the cat scrambles up Asra’s barrier and over it, launching itself at Muriel’s head. Muriel jerks to the side, so that the cat lands with all four paws on a tapestry on the opposite wall.

“Don’t let him out again—”

Asra drops his barrier, and steps aside, letting a wind-swept and frantic-looking Kai through.

She very nearly crashes into Muriel’s chest—he catches her by the shoulders before she does, and as she looks up at him, startled, all he can think of is how small she is, how close she is, how breathless she looks…

He drops his hands from her shoulders and takes a step back, face burning.

Kai immediately starts trying to shove him sideways.

Asra pulls up another barrier, just as the cat launches himself off the wall and at Muriel’s head. He tries to shred the barrier open with his claws, and when that fails, yowls _even louder_ and launches himself back at the tapestry, claws ripping several long tears in it as he slides down the wall to the floor.

At that moment, Muriel hears shouting coming from down the hall.

“Up here, Lady Aisha, the demon—”

“I’m sure it’s not a _demon_.”

“Maybe get behind us just in case, though.”

The cat goes very still. His ears flick in the direction of the voices.

“Oh no,” Kai says. “No, wait—”

The cat takes off down the hall, and Kai lets go of Muriel and sprints after it as fast as she can. Asra scrambles after her, and Muriel follows.

The cat reaches the corner nearly the same moment that Asra’s parents and a servant round it.

“Look out!” Kai yells, as the cat leaps directly at Aisha’s face—

Only for Aisha to raise her hand, and for the cat to be encased in a bubble.

Kai slides to a halt. Asra and Muriel catch up to her while she tries to catch her breath, and while the cat floats, weightless and all the more infuriated for it, a hair’s breadth from Aisha’s outstretched hand. Her familiar winds itself down her arm and smells the bubble with its tongue.

The cat bats at it, but that only makes the cat rotate in a slow, harmless circle in the air.

“Manners, dear,” Aisha scolds.

The cat lets out a low, angry growl.

“Fascinating!” Salim pushes his spectacles up his nose, and leans in to get a closer look. The cat swipes at him, but he doesn’t even flinch—only glancing occasionally over at Kai as he inspects the furious, slow-spinning cat. “Aisha, do you see this?”

“Yes, my love,” she deadpans, “I believe I see it.”

“I’d only heard _stories_ about them, never seen the real thing—Kalani, wherever did you find—”

“I’m so sorry,” Kai blurts. “There were some children throwing rocks at him in a barrel and I couldn’t just _leave_ him there but no one would help me find where he belonged and it was getting dark and it was raining so I had to bring him here and I told him so many times that he had to behave—”

The more frantically Kai speaks, the louder the cat’s growling becomes, until Salim leans back from the cat and looks at Kai with a lop-sided, and impossibly fond, smile.

“That’s all perfectly fine Kalani,” he says, “but would you mind telling your familiar that none of us want to hurt you? That should calm him down a little.”

No one says anything for a moment. Everyone looks at Kai, who stands there, wide-eyed and out of breath, for what must be a full minute before she says, “I’m sorry. My _what_?”

Salim laughs. Aisha, who this whole time has been fixing the cat with a severe expression, cracks a smile.

“Ester,” she says, “would you have some tea brought up for everyone? Up to mine and Salim’s rooms, please.”

Ester, the servant who came up with Asra’s parents, hardly lets Aisha finish before bolting back the way she came.

Tea comes shortly after they’re all settled. Asra’s parents’ sitting room is wide and spacious, with plenty of couches and cushions for sitting and every wall lined with bookshelves, those filled either with books or plants. Muriel has fond memories of sneaking up here, Asra teaching him to read under the canopy of pillow forts, eating as much food as they please while a snake or two slithers nearby. Sometimes he wonders how different his life would be if he had just stayed here—but then he thinks of the quiet still of the forest in the morning, the steady beat of Inanna’s paws on soft soil, and knows he would not have been happy.

After all, if it was so perfect here, then why was Asra always sneaking out?

Tonight, Kai sits on the softest chair, her new familiar in her lap glaring at Aisha with his ears flat against his skull. His overwhelming rage has calmed to a _noticeable_ discontentment, his tail twitching every so often, but he has not attempted to claw anyone else’s face off since Aisha let him out of the bubble.

Asra and Muriel sit on the couch nearby, Faust happily slithering her way back and forth across their shoulders, and Salim and Aisha each take an armchair, close enough that their fingertips touch when their hands hang off the armrests.

Ester does not bring the tea. A familiar old woman with a cane enters first, followed by a much younger servant who carries the tray.

“Thank you, Serris, Amin. Just set it down, I’ll serve everyone.”

“It is no problem at all, Lady Aisha.” The old woman, Serris, smiles warmly at everyone without looking directly at them. Her pupils, Muriel sees, are clouded by cataracts. “Amin has brought some snacks for your family of serpents—and I heard something about a cat, so the kitchen has sent up some fish trim. Good for the fur, as I understand it.”

Amin sets the tray down with shaking hands, his eyes never leaving the cat in Kai’s lap.

Muriel thinks the whole palace has heard about the cat, by this point.

“You said you found him in a barrel?” Salim asks, while Aisha serves the tea.

The cat flat out refuses to leave Kai’s lap, so she holds the bowl of fish trim in her hands while he devours it. “Yes. On the south end of town.”

“Whatever were you doing there?” Aisha wonders, her brows furrowing. “Kalani, that’s an extremely dangerous part of town. Turning down the wrong alley could have landed you in serious trouble.”

“I—I didn’t think it seemed so bad…”

“But how did you _get_ there? I can’t imagine your aunt sent you on an errand. She can’t be _that_ foolish.”

From the tone of Aisha’s voice, and the irritation rising from her in a muddled cloud, it’s clear that’s _exactly_ what she thinks happened.

Asra glances over at Muriel, but doesn’t say anything.

“Even if she did,” Salim interrupts, “clearly no harm came to Kalani. I’m sure Jay had her reasons…”

“I can’t imagine what _those_ might be. Not one bit.”

Muriel may not be… very fond of Jay either. But he thinks of the garden, and how heartbroken Kai would be if she weren’t allowed to go back to it…

He thinks of towers. Far away in the mountains, or high above a city.

He takes a deep breath, and opens his mouth to speak.

“Oh!” Kai shifts in place, holding the fish bowl in one hand while the other digs through her pocket. “I almost forgot!”

The cat lets out a high-pitched noise of complaint as Kai shifts around, but does not stop eating. It’s… an alarmingly _cute_ sound, for the angriest cat Muriel has never met.

Kai pulls a familiar satchel, bound in cloth and tied in twine, out of her pocket. “Muriel,” she says, “you left this on the doorstep.”

She’s holding it out to him, expectantly.

He stares at it. And then at her—at her smile, easy and friendly. Her hair tousled from wind and rain, her clothes splashed with mud, and covered in patches of black cat fur.

There is only kindness in her expression. From her he feels a touch of embarrassment, and a soft, welcoming fondness as she regards him.

His cheeks grow warm. He clears his throat. “I know. It’s… for protection.”

“Really?” Kai turns it over in her hand, and gives it a delicate sniff. “Protection for whom?”

Muriel feels his face begin to burn. He can’t quite meet Kai’s gaze, and finds himself looking down at the floor, and the eyes of everyone in the room on him.

Then he feels Asra’s hand on his knee, and the cool reassurance of his aura wash over him. “It’s to protect the shop,” Asra answers for him, “and the people who live in it.”

They spend nearly another hour discussing Kai’s familiar—how to ensure their bond grows healthily, a short tangent where they get sidetracked trying to pick a name for him, and a great deal of wondering where he _came_ from—and by the end of it, Aisha and Salim won’t hear a thing about Muriel heading back out to the woods.

“It’s pouring rain out there,” Aisha says. “You can sleep in Asra’s old room—is Inanna nearby? She’s more than welcome, as you always are, Muriel.”

Muriel clears his throat. “She went home. Doesn’t like walls.”

Aisha is already standing and heading to another room. “Of course, of course. I’m sure we can magic up something for you to sleep in, let me see what we have in the closet…”

“Meanwhile, Asra, give me a hand making the bed?”

“Sure thing, Dad.” Asra gives Muriel’s knee a quick squeeze, before standing and joining his father in the other room. Leaving Muriel and Kai (and her new familiar) alone in the room together.

Neither of them say anything for a good, long time. Kai tucks her hair behind her ear, while her cat glares at him. Muriel looks down at his hands, at the things around the room, at the tea he didn’t drink, at his feet…

“I won’t tell Asra,” Kai blurts into the silence.

Muriel glances up at her. She’s biting her lip, and petting her cat, and not _quite_ looking at Muriel.

“What… what I said today. Earlier. I won’t tell him.”

“… Thanks.”

“And um. I guess you can take this back,” she says, holding out the satchel once again. “Like I said, you don’t have to… you don’t have to be nice to me. Because of Asra.”

He looks down at the satchel in her hand.

“It’s not that I—I should say thank you. I really appreciate it. And the eggs. I really—it’s very sweet. I’ve never had friends before, and I really… really liked thinking we were friends. Because you wanted to be.”

He can feel her misery, again. Threatening to build just as strong as before—and her cat seems to feel it too, because he turns around and stands on his hind legs and buries his face in the side of her neck, suddenly purring louder than a cat that small and that angry has any business doing.

Kai lets out a surprised laugh, and blinks rapidly. Her eyes are suspiciously shiny.

“… Did it for you.”

Her eyes snap to his. “What?”

He swallows. “The… eggs. Satchel. They’re… they’re for you.”

She keeps staring at him, her brow furrowing. Her mouth hangs slightly open, as if she feels she should say something, but doesn’t know what.

So he shrugs, and glances down at the floor. “… I’d like to be friends, too.”

Kai’s happiness fills the room in a single, bright burst of warmth.

“Then we’re friends,” she says, with a soft voice that barely contains everything he knows she is feeling.

And he can’t help but glance over at her again, just to catch a glimpse of her smile; the corners of her eyes crinkling, how she bites her lip a little as she beams up at him, holding satchel and cat close to her heart.

_You like her_ , Asra had said. And he had thought, in the rain, that it was just Asra getting everything wrong again—because what he feels for Asra isn’t what he feels for Kai, who is sweet, and small, and gentle. Who was so concerned over a sunburn, who plucked a stray cat out of the gutters of the city and brought him back to the palace to find where he belonged.

It isn’t. It’s… different. Isn’t it?

“Friends,” he agrees, still a little breathless at the sight of her smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Muriel: Asra knows i love him and got married anyway ;_______;  
> Asra: You like her!!!  
> Muriel: ........... how did i forget that you're actually just dumb.
> 
> Kai: I know you and Asra are in love.  
> *Muriel.exe has stopped working*
> 
> \--
> 
> Anyway if you've read [Reversed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493776) then you knew the world's angriest, smallest cat was gonna show up eventually.
> 
> He shredded 3 pillows and was working on a 4th before Asra opened the door.
> 
> And as a side, side note, Aunt Jay totally had a tracking spell on Kai the whole time. ^^;


	4. Masquerade

It’s two weeks to Kai and Asra’s first anniversary, and it seems like the whole city has gone mad preparing. Asra’s uncle announced months ago that the entire city of Vesuvia would be welcomed into the palace for the celebrations, promising an entire week of feasting, displays of magic or art, and dancing.

It’s going to be a masquerade. Muriel’s been carving masks since he found out, whimsical animal shapes, and Asra’s been painting them, imbuing them with magic to make them shine a little brighter, and hide their wearer’s identity a little better. They’ve already sold quite a few, at Asra’s makeshift Tarot stand, but Muriel has refused to take all of the money so they’ve been putting it aside. “For a rainy day,” Asra says.

Kai is doubly busy, helping not only with preparations at the palace but also with the orders flooding her aunt’s magic shop.

“Perfumes, mostly,” Kai had explained, dark circles under her eyes as she, Asra and Muriel polish their hundredth glass bottle each. “And, um. Contraceptives. Lots of those. Aunt Jay has a lace making spell, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet, so I’m filling all of _these_ orders for her.”

Asra had immediately scrutinized the closest bottle. “Is it all magic perfume, or what?”

“Pretty much all of it has enchantments to make the scent last longer when you wear it. The more expensive ones have other properties—this one will make the wearer’s eyes glow when they say the word _please_.”

“That’s… weirdly specific.”

 “She ordered it special for her wife. And _her_ wife ordered her that one you’re holding, Asra. It will create an illusion of horns on the wearer’s head.”

Asra’s cheeks had flushed, and he had immediately put down the bottle.

“But most of them are simpler. Oh! I almost forgot!”

She had run off, then, over to a corner of the room, and come back a moment later carrying two ceramic jars.

“I made these for you when I was practicing! You should wear them, and let me know what you think!”

Muriel had taken the heavy, earth-toned jar home with him that night. And he had opened it and smelled it—and then immediately closed it again, because it was _strong,_ and Inanna had coughed and hacked and refused to come into the house for a solid minute, she was so surprised by it. So he shook his head and put it on a shelf, because the jar was nice enough, and forgot about it for a while.

Until today, two weeks to the masquerade, with Kai spending the night with him instead of Asra.

“I just need a _break_ ,” she had confessed in the shop that afternoon. “There’s so many people at the palace, and I’m supposed to know who they all _are_ , and Cinis gets so upset because they always want to _pet_ him…”

Muriel had glanced up at the cat in question. He was crouching in the rafters at the time, eyeing Asra and Muriel with his usual air of resigned tolerance. He’s grown a little over the past year, though he’s still an unusually small cat by far, and still so skinny that in spite of his fur he looks like someone put a bunch of charred sticks together and called it a cat. Not to mention that his since eyes are permanently narrowed, and glowing like hot coals, he remains the most unfriendly looking animal Muriel has ever seen.

In his opinion, anyone who tries to pet that cat deserves what’s coming to them.

“Cinis always feels better away from the city. Why don’t you have dinner at Muriel’s? Maybe stay the night?” Asra had suggested, with a sly glance at Muriel.

Muriel had glowered at Asra, who pretended not to notice.

“I still have dancing lessons…”

“I could cover for you. Say you’re not feeling well. You need a break, Kai, you’re running yourself ragged, and it’s only going to be busier once the masquerade starts.”

“You could come too,” Kai had prompted.

But Asra had only waved his hand. “I have one more dress fitting, remember? I’ll meet you both for pumpkin bread in the morning. Alright?”

Dinner is simple—they cook it together over an open fire, and as usual they don’t talk too much. It seems like Asra and Kai can talk all day about magical theory or which courtier was wearing _what_ , but whenever Kai and Muriel are alone she draws quieter. But it feels comfortable—she’ll ask him about a plant, or a tree, as they walk, and he’ll tell her where he found the sticks for this talisman or that charm, but their time spent with one another is largely in quiet, in the softness of their steps on the soil, in the song of distant birds or the contented clucking of his chickens.

Today, Kai radiates nervousness. She picks at her food, and sighs a lot, and is so lost in her thoughts that she doesn’t notice Cinis trying to steal some of Inanna’s deer leg.

The wolf puts one paw flat on his back and pins him there, ignoring his indignant howling while she continues eating.

Kai starts when Cinis cries out, and lets out an annoyed sigh when she sees him.

“I don’t know how you thought that one would end,” she scolds, when Inanna finally releases Cinis and he scampers back over to Kai. “Have some of mine if you’re still hungry.”

But even when her cat is sated, and happily curled up in her lap, she still doesn’t relax. She fidgets with her spoon, and the dinner she has barely touched, and generally radiates unhappiness until Muriel sighs, puts his bowl aside, and asks, “What’s wrong?”

She blinks up at him, owl-eyed. And then she bites her lip and looks down at her food again. “My father is arriving tomorrow.”

Muriel knows. Asra had told him, weeks ago, that Kai’s father had announced his intention to attend the masquerade. Asra’s mother has been threatening to enchant the dock planks to flip him into the ocean the moment he steps foot in Vesuvia.

“And?”

Kai shrinks in on herself. She picks at her food some more, sighs again, and finally admits, “He’s been… sending me letters.”

Muriel’s brow furrows. That, he didn’t know.

“I haven’t told anyone,” she continues. “They’re not… they’re not good letters. I stopped responding to them after the second one. I only read them just to make sure he’s not going to show up and take me away again.”

“We wouldn’t let him,” Muriel assures her.

She smiles, and a thread of fondness works its way through her anxiety. “I know that, now. I didn’t at first, but… I’m pretty sure Aunt Jay would turn him into a fish if he tried.”

He can’t help but chuckle at that. “She should, anyway.”

Kai _almost_ laughs. But then her expression falls again, and she puts her bowl aside, and tucks her knees close to her chest.

“He’s… he’s angry that Asra and I haven’t had children. And he says that I’m ungrateful, for everything he’s done for me, and that I’m not taking any of my duties seriously… And I guess he’s right, because I’m hiding out here instead of practicing my dancing…”

“So? Practice here.”

She looks at him like he’s speaking another language. “Here.”

He shrugs, and then gestures to the clearing. “It’s flat.”

She smiles. “I need a partner, Muriel.”

“For what?”

She shakes her head at him, radiating amusement. “Have you ever seen people dance before?”

“… Yes.”

“Okay, then.” She shoos Cinis off her lap, stands, and dusts herself off, before walking around the fire, and holding her hand out to Muriel. “Show me.”

He stares at her hand. “What?”

“You said I should practice here. So, dance with me.”

Part of him wants to say no. Part of him wants to roll his eyes and make a fuss over it, and then get up and go feed his chickens.

But… she’s smiling at him. And her nervousness has vanished, and she’s looking at him, not thinking of her father, or the upcoming masquerade…

“You’re close,” he tells her, moments later, as she guides his hand to her hip.

“That’s the idea,” she replies, a little embarrassed. “I uh—maybe I should lead. Asra says I can lead when we dance if I want to, he likes following better.”

“Is it easier?”

“Uh. I won’t be able to like. Spin you or anything. I’m too short.”

He gets the distinct impression that Kai was not at all expecting him to actually take her up on this. “I’ll lead,” he says. “If you… tell me how.”

She swallows. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Um. So. You go—your right foot, first.”

“Go where?”

“Towards me.”

“Won’t I step on you?”

“No, I’ll step back when you do. You kind of like… guide me. Push me? A little? Whenever you’re ready.”

He looks down at his feet, just to be sure. It brings him closer to her, and he can smell a subtle, floral scent in her hair. A sweet flower, and something like the ocean… But not like dead fish. Nice ocean smells; salt and clear air.

She looks up at him, her eyes wide. She’s suddenly nervous again—but it feels different, this time. A little closer to excitement.

He takes a slow, halting step forward.

She does not notice, and he bumps into her.

“Oh! Sorry! I wasn’t—um. Looking.”

“This is stupid,” he says, and immediately drops her hand and takes four steps back.

“No it’s not! I’m sorry. Can we try again?”

He almost says _no_. But she sounds so eager, and…

They try again.

“Maybe we just… sway a bit. Pretend there’s music.”

“Sway?”

“Yeah. Get a feel for the rhythm. That… isn’t there.”

She’s very close to him. She has to crane her head back to look up at him, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

He takes a deep breath—and smells her perfume—before starting to sway.

It’s not like there’s no music at all. The sun is starting to go down, and there are birds singing elsewhere in the forest. There’s the wind in the trees around them, and the sound of the brook he gets his water from.

The sound of her breathing. The beating of his heart. There’s that, too.

Eventually, Kai takes a step, a gentle pressure from her fingertips pulling him along with her. She steps backwards and he follows, startled, but she goes slow, and steady. She smiles up at him after the first step, and then she does it again, and her smile spreads, and with each halting step they take together, he can feel her nervousness slowly fade away, replaced in strides by the warmth of affection, and the familiar, steady contentedness that he has come to associate with their time alone together.

They dance like that, or sort of dance, to music that they cannot really hear, until it begins to rain.

He can hear it before he feels it—the rush of wind in the trees as it shifts, and then the patter of water droplets on the leaves above their heads. And he knows he should hurry and get her inside, before she gets soaked, but… there’s a part of him that doesn’t want this to end. This closeness. With her.

She doesn’t even seem to notice the rain until a drop rolls from his forehead to her nose. And she blinks, startled, before laughing.

Muriel shields her with his cloak and hurries her inside—in spite of her protests—before going back out to put out the fire, and collect what’s left of their dinner.

When he finally ducks inside his hut, Inanna is curled up on his bed, and Kai has started a weak fire inside. She’s sitting on the furs before it while Cinis howls indignantly and stomps around her, tail up in the air.

“Oh you didn’t even get wet,” she scolds the cat. “Not even a drop. Oh—alright, fine, you were _traumatized_ , you silly creature.”

Muriel closes the door behind him. The cat levels him with a withering look, before immediately climbing into Kai’s lap, standing on his hind legs, and pressing his face into her neck. He purrs as loudly as possible, while Kai sighs and strokes his back.

“You’re completely dry, you know,” she informs the cat, who only purrs louder in response.

Muriel shakes off his cloak, drops it onto his chair, and then joins Kai by the fire. She smiles up at him as he sits, and then regards the growing fire a while longer.

Muriel shoves a few more pieces of kindling in, and the logs start to take, finally.

She exhales. “Sorry. No good at fire magic.”

“S’fine. Don’t need magic for this.”

She nods, and he tries to ignore the hint of relief that she’s feeling.

He wonders how long she’s been afraid of fire. What happened, to make her that way. Maybe he’ll ask her, one day—but not today. Not in the woods, where it could break the comfortable calm that always settles between them out here.

“Muriel, can I ask you something?” she ventures, the second time Muriel uses a poker to move the logs around.

“Sure.”

“Are you an empath?”

He stills. And then he fusses with the log some more, even though it doesn’t need it. “Why?”

“Well. Aunt Jay’s been teaching me about crystals, and what they’re used for, and I noticed she always wears Malachite around you, and she has it enchanted to hide what she’s feeling…”

He doesn’t say anything. He knows he should, but he doesn’t really know _what_. And the longer he’s silent, the more Kai’s nervousness begins to build, and the louder her cat’s purring gets, and the more she keeps talking…

“And you just always seem to know when something’s wrong, even when Asra doesn’t, and you’re so good at just being close when I need you to even though I’m not sure you really like it…”

He clears his throat. He leans back, sitting next to her once again. He doesn’t look at her, but she stops talking anyway, her uncertainty filling the air with a sensation of grinding teeth.

“Yes,” he answers, finally.

She exhales, and relief spills out of her in a bubbling laugh. “Oh, good. That would have been embarrassing if I’d made that all up in my head.”

He can’t help but laugh, a little. A low, rumbling chuckle that just sounds so rough, next to hers.

But she only beams up at him, when he finally dares to look over at her. “That’s a very rare talent, Muriel.”

He shrugs, cheeks burning. “I guess.”

“I mean it! Is it very overwhelming? I guess I see why you’d want to live out here, away from everyone.”

He watches her as she pauses to consider the fire again. And she tries to disguise it, but the idea of living out here worries her. Or maybe, that he would rather live out here than the city.

It worries Asra, too. So Muriel’s used to that.

“What’s happiness feel like?”

He frowns, confused. “Being happy.”

“ _Muriel_. Someone _else’s_ happiness, I meant.”

He sighs. “Pot boiling over.”

Kai giggles, and shifts a little closer. “I _guess_. How about… surprise?”

“… They go blank. And quiet.”

“Blank?”

“… When everything’s too loud, so you close the door, and you can’t hear anything anymore, but the silence is loud. Like that.”

“Huh. How about… How about love?”

“Love?” Muriel pretends he has to think about it a moment. “It’s. It’s not _one_ feeling. It’s… a lot of them.”

“Tell me about them,” Kai prompts.

He can see the reflection of the fire in front of them in her eyes.

“Dunno,” he mumbles, feeling his cheeks warm, but not looking away.

“Just try. For me?”

He… does. He thinks about people he’s passed on the street, before—and he thinks of Asra’s parents. The adoration Salim feels when Aisha combs her fingers through Asra’s hair, or the fierce protectiveness that rises so frequently from Aisha. And then he thinks of the butterflies he gets in his stomach when there’s moonlight in Asra’s hair, or when he smiles so broadly his cheeks dimple…

Or when he danced with Kai, just now, to birdsong and the sound of oncoming rain. How safe he feels, next to her, firelight in her eyes, and a subtle, sweet perfume in her hair.

“I’m sorry,” Kai blurts. “That was too—personal and—I’m too close, aren’t I? I know you don’t like it, you like your space, I’m sorry…”

She gets up, and Cinis complains loudly even though she holds him close to her chest. She starts to walk towards the door, radiating anxiousness and embarrassment.

“I don’t mind,” Muriel says.

She stops. She looks, tentatively, over her shoulder. “Mind what?”

He clears his throat. “Being close to you.”

She takes a moment, as if she doesn’t quite believe him. But he does not look away from her, even though he can feel his cheeks burning like he’s shoved his face into the fire.

Eventually, she smiles. And she comes back to the fire, and sits next to Muriel.

They don’t talk again for a while—but she does rest her head on his shoulder, her embarrassment easing into comfort, and calm, and the warmth of belonging that comes with them.

 

The Masquerade is loud, and there are so many people, but Kalani does not step on Asra’s toes once when they dance.

She leads, after all—and Asra bends down to whisper jokes in her ear whenever she feels herself begin to falter, or when she starts to hold him too tight so it turns out alright in the end. He’s wearing the perfume she made him, and every time he moves closer, she catches the smell of patchouli and black pepper, and feels herself relax a little.

Asra does his best to keep her away from her father. At dinner she can’t even see him, and she wants so badly to find out who made the seating plan and give them the biggest, fiercest hug she can manage.

Only part of her feels guilty, avoiding him the first night.

Because she thinks of Aisha and Salim, and even Asra’s uncle, and she thinks… maybe that’s what family should be. So, maybe if she gave her father a chance, and showed him…

Wishful thinking, Aunt Jay had told her.

And Aunt Jay is… usually right. Usually.

Cinis shadows her, sometimes directly under her feet, sometimes lying across her shoulders like an overprotective scarf. He glowers at anyone who gets too close, which doesn’t always stop people from bothering her and Asra, but at least his growling gives her an excuse to leave conversations she doesn’t want to be a part of.

It drains on Asra, being around this many people.

Kalani feels like she’d be alright with it, if she wasn’t terrified her father was going to walk up and start talking to her at any minute.

As the night drags on, however, she gets separated from Asra, briefly. She lets her guard down, maybe—she sees the baker, and for a moment forgets that she’s not _Kai_ , and he doesn’t know her. And she’s left Asra’s side before she even thinks about it, and then she loses track of him entirely.

Just as she reaches for the enchanted lepidolite pendant she’s wearing, a spell to locate Asra on the tip of her tongue, suddenly her father stands before her. Arms behind his straight, straight back, and his eyes narrowed as he looks down his nose at her.

“If I may take a moment of your time, daughter,” he says, his tone perfectly polite and civil. “I believe we have much to discuss.”

She flounders a moment. Cinis, standing at her side, lets out a low warning growl.

 _No,_ Cinis warns her. He doesn’t talk much, and it can be a little jarring to hear such a deep, threatening voice come from such a small cat.

 _Don’t you dare_ , she thinks back at the cat, as hard and loud as possible. _This is a party!_

“I should get back to—to my spouse.”

Her father only steps closer, ignoring Cinis entirely. “Really? You expect me to believe you have any relationship with him other than a kept pet? I instructed you to _seduce_ him, girl, and you have yet to cement your position with children. Have I taught you _nothing_?”

She smells, very suddenly, the scent of myrrh.

“Lady Kalani,” a familiar voice rumbles just behind her, though she has never heard him call her that. “The count… requires your presence. Immediately.”

She turns, and Muriel is standing just behind her. He hardly looks like _him_ at all—he’s dressed head to toe in a formal guard’s uniform, white and gold, a wooden bear mask resting on his face. His hair has been slicked back, he actually looks like he’s shaved properly for a change, and he’s standing up straight for… possibly the first time that she’s seen, anyway.

He’s… very tall. She forgets that, sometimes.

“I believe whatever the Count of Vesuvia has to say to my daughter, he can say to me,” her father retorts, moving to grab Kalani’s arm.

Muriel physically places himself between Kalani and her father.

“State business.”

And then before anyone can say anything else, Kalani feels Muriel’s hand on the small of her back, and he begins to lead her away.

She hears Cinis hiss behind them, and her father sputter indignantly, then the scamper of claws on tile as the cat chases after them. He leaps directly onto her shoulder, curling protectively around her neck. She’s so nervous and jittery that she swears he feels bigger than normal, for a moment.

Muriel’s hand on her back is warm, and trembling.

“Muriel,” she hisses.

“Keep walking,” he whispers, his voice shaking.

He leads her into another hall, and then another, and another, and his hand starts shaking so bad that Kalani realises he’s lost. She slips her arm around his, thinking _calming thoughts_ and hoping Muriel feels them too.

At first, he tenses. But she hums, a little song Asra sometimes sings to himself, and she leads him gently away from the ever-growing crowds.

She leads him into a room that smells of forests, and ripe apples. There aren’t many people in it at all—and they all seem to be lingering near the door, as the room doesn’t seem to hold much appeal for them. But Kalani sees rows and rows of trees, probably magical constructs because they don’t _breathe_ like real trees, but not illusions because she can see them. There is a fog winding through the trees that obscures the size of the room, and it feels like Asra’s magic on her skin—moonlight soft, nighttime still.

She tugs Muriel through the trees, deeper and deeper, until the voices drifting through the doorway vanish somewhere behind them, and there is only the sound of leaves crunching under their feet, and Muriel’s laboured, panicked breathing, and until no matter how many times she turns around, all she can see is Muriel, and trees.

Muriel lets out a relieved sigh, and then finally, _finally_ , turns and faces her properly. He puts his hands on her shoulders, his touch so light she wonders if he’s worried she’ll break under the slightest pressure.

“You okay?” he asks. “He didn’t… he didn’t hurt you. Did he?”

“Am _I_ okay? What about you? Muriel, what are you _doing_ here?”

“He was scaring you. What did he say?”

Kalani exhales. She reaches up, and takes off her gemstone-heavy jaguar mask, looking down at it as she turns it over and over in her hands. “Nothing I shouldn’t have expected, I guess.”

Muriel hesitates. She can feel him waver three times before he lifts one hand from her shoulder, and tentatively touches two fingers to her chin, guiding her gaze back to his.

“Nothing you deserved,” he tells her, his green eyes soft and warm under his mask.

She feels… very warm, all of a sudden.

They are interrupted by the sound of leaves crunching nearby—and Muriel whirls, reaching for Kalani as if to run off with her. But it’s only Asra, holding up his skirts in both hands, looking frantic and worried until he sees them both—and then he just looks equal parts relieved and confused.

“Kai,” he says, rushing forward, “are you okay? Did he find you? I turned around and you were gone, and you kept moving every time I tried to find you…”

“I’m alright,” she assures him. “Muriel was amazing! He just walked up to my father and interrupted him, and whisked me away like it was official palace business.”

Muriel looks like he might faint. “Don’t remind me.”

“You did _what_?” Asra turns, and looks as though he wants to check Muriel over. “You—Muriel, that’s amazing!”

He looks like he’s starting to sweat under his mask. “Please stop talking about it.”

“Where did you even get this uniform? I don’t think there’s a guard that’s your size…”

Muriel clears his throat. “… I asked Jay.”

“Did she just have that lying around?”

Muriel just looks even more embarrassed and shrugs but honestly, Kalani wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

But it seems Asra isn’t really expecting an answer—he fusses over Muriel’s uniform instead, plucking at the seams. “I mean, it’s _good_ , but it obviously doesn’t hold up to any sort of scrutiny… The number of buttons is wrong, I’m. I’m kind of sure.”

Kalani tugs uneasily at her hair, and shakes her head to clear it. She still feels all warm, and almost fuzzy, from what Muriel said a few moments ago. But that warmth is mostly embarrassment now—because Muriel was just being a good friend, is all. Poor Muriel looks torn between letting Asra fuss and running off into the distance, never to be seen again—and Asra, of course, has no clue.

She wishes Muriel would just let her tell him. They’re perfect for each other.

Cinis chirps, and Kalani bends over to pick him up. She scratches his ears while he purrs in her arms, and she steps up next to Asra, mock scrutinizing the uniform. “Nope, that’s the right number.”

“Well—these seams are _too_ nice, you know? And I see where she could have put in—a dozen protection spells. I could right now, actually, it would be easy.”

“… Please don’t make me turn blue again.”

“That was one time! Wait, you smell different. What did Jay put on this? Myrrh?”

Kalani can see Muriel’s flush spreading out from under his mask, down his neck. “… Perfume. Kai made it.”

“Oh. _Oh_. Well, in that case, you smell great.”

Poor Muriel looks like he wants to turn invisible.

“Asra,” she says, “We’re both _fine_. I’m happy Muriel’s here, and I’m sure my aunt was happy to help.”

Asra crosses his arms over his chest. “Well. You could have just _said_ you wanted to help, Muriel. I would have snuck you in. I just—what were you planning in the first place?”

Muriel glances back at Kalani, and then stares down at the ground.

“… He doesn’t feel nice things,” Muriel mumbles, just loud enough for them to hear. “I don’t like him.”

Asra’s expression softens, his lips curling up into a smile. “You didn’t have a plan at all, did you?”

Muriel keeps staring at the ground, and does not reply. So Kalani reaches, low where he can see, and slowly takes his hand. Hesitating just the moment before, so he can pull away if he wants.

He doesn’t. She slowly twines her fingers in his, and then stands on her toes and kisses the cheek of his mask.

“Thank you,” she says, softly.

He swallows.

When Kalani steps back, Asra is looking behind them. She thinks she can make out a flush past his fox mask, but it might be the rosy, false-autumn sunset around them. “Well I think we’ve made enough of a public appearance for tonight, don’t you, Kai?”

“Well…” she glances over at Muriel, who looks like he’s had enough for the night. “Maybe. But the bubble room sounds like so much fun…”

Asra winks. “I agree. Let’s go freshen up first, though.”

He refuses to elaborate the whole way up to their rooms—through all the secret portals and back ways that they know—but when they arrive at Kalani and Asra’s rooms, there are two expertly carved wooden masks, and two matching outfits, laid out on the bed.

“Asra!” Kalani picks up the dress meant for her—the colour of the sky at noon, with glimmering amber accents—and holds it up to herself. “Where did you get these?”

“Just used my share of the mask money. I was worried they wouldn’t be finished in time—oh, that reminds me.” Asra disappears into the closet, and then comes out again with an armful of green and black fabric. “I had a feeling you might change your mind,” he says, beaming at Muriel.

Muriel is still standing in the doorway, looking uneasily around their bedroom. “… Only one bed?”

“We used to take turns sleeping on the floor,” Kalani explains, bending to pick up her new mask. “But… it just seemed silly after a while. We share, now.”

“It’s big enough for like, six people,” Asra says, louder and quicker than he needs to.

She glances up at Asra. His mask is off, and she can see him blushing as he hands the bundled outfit to Muriel. “You can change in the bathroom, if you like. I’ll use the closet, and Kai can just… let us know when she’s done. And we can all go back to the party and have fun and no one will know it’s us.”

Asra hurries Muriel into the bathroom, and then comes back for his own gown—and Kalani stops him before he takes it, with a hand on his arm.

“How long were you planning this?” she asks him.

His returning smile is coy. “Well. You just got so excited when we were planning all the different rooms, but I knew it would be hard for us to just… enjoy them. So I thought, maybe our secret identities could come to the party, too.”

She laughs. “ _Secret identities_.”

“What?”

“You don’t even use a fake name, Asra.”

“I told you, there’s like a hundred Asras my age.”

“Do any of them have white hair?” she teases, standing on her toes to ruffle the hair in question.

“Hey, that look like an hour—”

“And purple eyes?”

“Uh, _lavender_ , thank you.”

“And cheek dimples when they smile?”

He’s well and truly blushing, now. “Well. I’m sure they have _some_ of those things. Maybe. Dimples? Do my cheeks really—”

He turns, as if to go to the closest mirror, but she touches his arm again.

He stops, as suddenly as if she’d grabbed him.

“Thank you,” she says, feeling her own face begin to warm.

He clears his throat. “It’s no big deal.”

“No, I mean… Not just this. For everything.” She rocks back onto her heels, and tugs at her hair. “A year ago, I was so scared.”

He turns back to her, slowly.

“I could barely remember _not_ being at school, and all of a sudden I was expelled, and this person who—he’s my father, he’s _supposed_ to—to look out for me. And I was six years old, the last time I’d seen him, but he was so…”

Cinis starts rubbing his face against her ankles and purring, as loud as he can.

“And then we’re up here, alone together, and I was _so scared_. Because he had told me what—what I had to do, to make you like me. But instead—instead you took me to see a forest, and I’d always wanted to see one, Asra, _so badly_. I met Muriel and his chickens and Inanna, and then you helped my find my Aunt, and your parents let her teach me magic even though I know you mother doesn’t like her. And tonight—everyone trying their best to keep my father away from me, even Muriel, and this…”

There are tears in her eyes, now. She rubs furiously at them with the back of her palm—only for Asra to step forward, and catch her wrist. He takes her hand and holds it between his, a moment, before reaching up himself, cupping her cheek in his palm and wiping the tears from her eyes with his thumb.

He looks, for a moment, as if he’s about to say something. But then the moment passes, and he smiles instead. “You never had to _make_ anyone like you, Kai.”

She lets out a breathy laugh. “I had some teachers who would seriously disagree with that.”

He laughs, low and soft. As he starts to withdraw, she curls her fingers tighter around his.

“I’m—I’m trying to say that this year has been the best year of my life,” she tells him. “So… thank you. For your part in it.”

Finally, she drops his hand. He ducks his head.

“I should… go change.”

“Yeah! Yeah, me too.”

He doesn’t turn from her immediately. He lingers, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted. And then he closes his mouth, and she’s close enough to hear the _clack_ of his teeth as he does, shakes his head, and picks up his gown and mask, and heads into the closet to change.

She lets out the breath she’d been holding, and tries to calm the racing of her heart.

 

By the time Kai finally agrees to go to bed, she’s nearly falling asleep on her feet, she’s so exhausted.

Muriel carries her all the way up to her and Asra’s rooms, and Asra pretends not to notice his furious blushing the whole while.

“You should stay tonight, too,” Kai mumbles into Muriel’s shoulder while Asra unlocks the door. “It’s late.”

And Muriel must be exhausted, too, because he doesn’t even argue with her.

Muriel and Kai fall asleep right away—Kai on her side, as usual, Cinis curled up into a ball at the small of her back, and Muriel flat on his back in the middle of the bed, snoring ever so slightly. Faust is already curled up on her own pillow, on the corner of Asra’s side of the bed, her tongue flicking lazily as she dreams.

Asra takes a few minutes to cast a laundering spell on their clothes, before folding and tucking them away in the chest in the closet. The chest has grown to bursting over the last year—Asra keeps all of Kai’s street clothing in there, as well as his own, and a few books he prefers to keep to himself.

One of them has the flowers Kai wore on their wedding night, pressed between the pages. Another has a few of the forget-me-nots that grow near Muriel’s hut.

When he returns to the bed, he doesn’t slip under the covers right away. He watches them both sleep a while, in the slivers of moonlight that slip past the curtains. He watches Muriel’s chest rise and fall, admires his peaceful, relaxed expression. He sees Kai’s hand, resting on the bed so, so close to Muriel’s shoulder. As if she were reaching out, in her sleep.

Sometimes, he forgets it’s been a year.

Sometimes, he marvels that it’s _only_ been a year.

It seems at the same time that Kai was thrown into his life yesterday, and that she’s always been there. He thinks back to his childhood memories of running through the streets with Muriel, and it’s jarring that he cannot place Kai there in turn.

More often than not, when he is alone with Kai, he turns, and is surprised that Muriel isn’t there, too.

It’s strange, because of how _not_ strange it is at all, to see Muriel in this bed, too.

 _They’ll make a great couple, someday_ , he thinks, as he slips into bed beside Muriel.

It’s not a sad thought. It’s not.

He drifts off to the slow, steady rhythm of Muriel’s breaths—and half-wakes later, as Muriel slings an arm over his side, and tucks himself against Asra’s back. Like they used to, when they were kids—only, Muriel’s a lot bigger now.

Just as Asra is about to fall asleep again, he hears the blankets shift, and a low _mrr_ of complaint from Cinis. And then Kai’s arm slings over Muriel’s side, her fingertips just resting on Asra’s hip.

Asra lies there, his heart in his throat, listening to Kai and Muriel breathing, feeling the rise and fall of Muriel’s chest at his back like a burning fire, Kai’s fingertips like lightning sparks, and he thinks: they will make a great couple. Just the two of them.

If his breath catches, and his eyes water—then no one else is awake to see it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **playwithdinos:**  
>  *sends theia a snippet on discord*  
> an appetizer  
> if you will  
>  **cedarmoons:**  
>  this must be what volta felt like
> 
> Sup I had a random long weekend so you got this update real quick
> 
> Never expect this again


	5. Heirloom

Five years after Kalani arrives in Vesuvia, Aunt Jay passes away.

Kalani spreads her ashes in the forest, in a remote clearing, where Jay said she’d spread her wife’s, years ago.

Aisha had offered a state funeral—and though Kalani had been touched, she knows Jay would have hated it. At first she thinks it will only be herself, Asra, and Muriel, but as she and Asra walk from the shop to the woods, urn in hand, it seems like people start walking with them. The baker, the nice couple that lives next door, the family of the little girl who liked to bring Zaru fruit… even Aisha and Salim join them, disguised from the crowd by illusion spells Kalani sees right through.

In the end, a crowd of a hundred or so people send off her Aunt Jay. Nearly every one of them has a story to tell—and it seems like this makeshift memorial takes all day, from dawn to the last creeping hours of daylight.

At the end of it all, Kalani and Asra spend the night at Muriel’s place. Inanna takes the bed while the three of them fall asleep on the furs by the fire—she sleeps with one of Asra’s hands in hers, between hers and Muriel’s chests, Asra flush against her back, and Cinis just behind her knees. She falls asleep to the steady rhythm of Muriel and Asra breathing on each side of her, the occasional crackle of the low, low fire at Muriel’s back, and the distant rain falling in the trees outside.

That’s the easiest part of it all. Falling asleep that night, out in the woods with Asra and Muriel.

She goes back to the shop the next morning. To deal with all of Jay’s belongings, she tells Asra, though she can’t imagine packing them up. The garden takes care of itself, mostly. Kai finds a few weeds and pulls them, and trims the raspberry bushes along the wall that are starting to strain their containment spell, but that only takes a few hours. And only because she takes her time.

She makes tea, and waits for her Aunt’s coughing to break the silence. She reads a book she’s read a dozen times before, and waits for Jay to wake, and ask for water. Or to tell a story, like it’s the first time she’d told it.

_You’re supposed to know when your twin dies. Everyone says that._

_I know, Aunt Jay. You told me already._

_Didn’t know. Had—had no idea. Childbirth, of all things._

Nothing breaks the silence but the too-quiet turning of each page.

Before she knows it, she’s spent a week in that house, trying to work up the courage to sort through her Aunt’s things. But it seems silly to—where will it all go? Who would want it? So she washes all the dirty laundry, and burns the old bedsheets, and sleeps on the couch because she can’t bear to sleep on the bed, even with fresh linens her aunt never used.

 _Let’s go_ , Cinis complains at the end of that week.

“You were just outside,” she informs him, as she considers the overcrowded spice cupboard. There are three half empty bottles of anise pods—she should condense them. Save space.

She has been saying that to herself for three days.

_Chase mice._

“There’s mice in the garden.”

_All gone._

She sighs, and closes the spice cupboard. “I seriously doubt that.”

Before her familiar can retort, Kalani hears someone pounding on the shop’s front door.

She turns back to the stairs, frowning. It doesn’t sound like Muriel or Asra knocking—they know to just let themselves in, anyway. They both have keys.

But the knocking continues—polite, but urgent, she thinks. She thinks she can hear someone calling out. A familiar voice, though it takes her a moment to place it…

She goes to the window above the door, opens it, and peers down at a head of curly blonde hair.

“Trevor?”

The boy looks up at her, startled, hand wavering mid-knock on the door.

“Miss Kai?”

Cinis jumps up onto her shoulder and pokes his head out the window, his tail thrashing in interest.

“Miss Kai! I’m so sorry to bother you—I know it’s only been a week since the funeral and all and I know you’re not open, but my mom’s run out of that tea you and your aunt make—uh, used to make—for her migraines, and no one else even knows what’s in it…”

Cinis chirps, then jumps back into the house and runs down the stairs.

She watches him go—and then with a wry smile, she leans back out the window. “Be right down,” she tells Trevor, before following Cinis down the stairs.

Trevor is _still_ apologizing when she unlocks the door and lets him in.

“… and she said not to bother you but she can’t even run her stall, they’re so bad, and I’m so, so sorry because I know you’re _mourning_ and it’s _important_ —”

She stubs her toe on the corner of the counter trying to go around it, and hisses out a curse under her breath.

“Miss Kai?”

“I don’t know why she liked it so damn _dark_ in here.”

 _Mystery_ , Cinis supplies. He’s already up in his usual perch in the rafters, happily hiding in the shadows above one of the ever-burning lanterns.

“Mystery my ass, she was just trying to hide the dust.”

Trevor gives an uncertain half-laugh. “Is this… a bad time?”

Kalani breathes out through her teeth. She throws her hair over her shoulder—it feels _greasy_ , doesn’t it—and finally retrieves the heavy patient book out from under the counter. “Let me just find my Aunt’s notes on your mother, here. It’s Olivia Fells, right?”

“She goes by Liv. I can… I can come back.”

She opens the book to the first page, and then immediately squints and leans as close to the page as she can get. “Her writing is _atrocious…_ and of _course_ it’s not in any kind of order. No, that would have been too simple.”

“You can _read_? That’s pretty neat.”

She summons a ball of light in her palm, and Trevor jumps nearly out of his skin.

“Also—also neat. Maybe _warn_ a person before you do that…?”

Above their heads, Cinis chatters in an eerie imitation of laughter. She can hear him pacing along the rafter, and without looking she knows that his eyes are glowing dying ember orange, and, if he casts a shadow, that it’s bigger than a cat his size should have.

_Better than mice._

“Stop it, Cinis,” she tells him. “You’re scaring him.”

“No, no he’s not. It’s uh. Part of the ambiance. Your freaky shadow cat. Endearing, really.”

Kalani spares a glance up at Trevor, who looks very pale in her witchlight.

“He’s not gonna eat me, right?” he whispers.

 _Maybe,_ Cinis says.

She can’t help but smile at Trevor. It feels… very strange on her face. Like an old muscle that hasn’t been worked in a long time.

Good strange, she thinks.

“No, he won’t,” she says, with a warning look up at Cinis.

He flicks his tail at her, but otherwise doesn’t reply.

“Cool, cool. I knew that.” Trevor rocks back and forth on his heels for a while as Kalani digs through the book. She listens to him wander around the shop, his boots occasionally clunking against some poorly placed piece of furniture in the dim lighting, Cinis following him along the rafters the whole while.

She eventually finds her aunt’s notes on Trevor’s mother—and as she digs through the cabinets to see if there’s any still made, Trevor asks, “So uh. Is _your_ Asra hanging around, today?”

She spares him a glance over her shoulder. He’s standing in the light coming through the door, and she thinks he might be blushing.

“ _My_ Asra?”

“Well. Just so you know I’m not talking about like… the Count’s nephew, or the Asra down the street from me, or Asra the smith’s kid, or Asra who cheats at dice… there’s like a hundred Asras. Two hundred. People _still_ name their kids after the count’s nephew—and now his wife, too, I met two Kalanis this week!”

She finds herself shaking her head. “Doesn’t make him _my_ Asra, Trevor. If you go around saying that, people might get ideas.”

“Oh, you two aren’t…?”

She pulls open the drawer, and finds a single satchel of tea. She digs it out with a sigh—there’s only enough for two, maybe three cups in there. How could she have let this get so low?

“Not what?” she asks, distracted.

“You know. _You know._ ”

“Just because you say it twice doesn’t mean it’ll make more sense, Trevor.”

Trevor clears his throat. “Like he. He looks at you. And stuff.”

“He looks at me.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “Miss Kai, I am _fifteen_ , I can’t explain it for you. All I know is, Mom and her friends are always talking about whether you’re gonna marry your Asra, or that tall scary guy who hangs around all the time.”

She very nearly closes her finger in the drawer. “Muriel?”

“Yeah, that guy. Well, he’s not really _that_ scary, I heard he always goes and feeds the dock kids and sticks up for them when the guards are picking on them—and one time he lifted a real heavy cart off a dog before it could get crushed—”

“Marry? Me?”

“ _Yes_ , Miss Kai, keep up. Anyway, I don’t think Mister Muriel’s really that scary, and a couple times I’ve seen him in here looking at you like your Asra looks at you, too. I mean, I guess you would know if he’s really scary or not, he’s your friend, too.”

Kalani stares at him. “Your _mother_ talks about who I’m going to marry?”

Trevor lets out a long-suffering sigh. “She talks about who _everyone_ is going to marry. All. The. Time. Oh, is that her tea?”

She shakes her head. She hands him the satchel of tea, and he gives it a tentative sniff before reaching into his pocket with his other hand. “Yeah, that smells right. No one else even got it _smelling_ right. So Mom didn’t want to be a _bother_ so I couldn’t get her to give me any money but I got this. As a down payment.”

He pulls a single red apple out of his pocket.

She stares at it so long that Trevor starts blushing again.

“I’ll bring more when you’re open for real, okay?”

“Apples?”

“Money! This isn’t—I know—don’t you know how a _barter_ system works, Miss Kai?”

A half-laugh escapes her, in spite of herself. “This one’s on the house, Trevor.”

He holds the apple out, a little more insistently. “I had to fight an old lady for this apple, Miss Kai,” he says, dead serious.

She _actually_ laughs at that. She takes the apple, and Trevor grins.

“Bye Miss Kai!” he yells, sprinting out the shop door and down the street.

She holds the apple a while longer, staring at the open door. After a moment, she takes a bite out of the apple, finding it tart, crisp, and full of sweet, delicious juice.

As she finishes the apple, she hears another knock at the door.

“I’m sorry, I know your light isn’t on,” says one of the neighbours, poking her head in. “But are you open? My husband’s quite low on his arthritis balm…”

Kalani licks the last of the juice from her fingers. “We’re open,” she says, and Cinis chitters happily in the rafters above her head.

 

That night, she closes up shop, fills a basin of cool fresh water from the pump in the garden, and brings it upstairs.

She undresses and tosses her clothes aside. She soaks her hair, and then rubs oils into it and combs it out, over and over, until it feels healthy. And then she washes her skin, shivering, scrubbing her whole body until it’s raw.

When she’s washing her back, her eye catches a flash of moonlight where she doesn’t expect it. She looks over her shoulder for the source, and sees her own reflection staring back at her in the half-mirror hung by her aunt’s dresser.

She can see the tattoos her aunt gave her, a few months before she got sick. They start on her left arm, continue over her shoulder, and then travel down her back, tapering off at the base of her spine.

There’s a sun on her shoulder blade. It’s the largest symbol—she knows what half of them mean, she thinks, but the sun in particular her aunt had been most clear on.

_With every morning, the sun rises. With every night, the sun falls. It is the heart of all magic—the source of light, life, and energy, and where all energy returns, like the breath in our lungs, before it must once again leave. No matter how it changes, to matter what happens to it once it has left, it always returns to the heart._

_Life is like that too, Kai. Live long enough, and you’ll see the same patterns, different people going through the same motions, over and over. A little different each time. Repetition is the sun’s way of grabbing our attention—of telling us that something is important._

_When you notice something repeating, time and time again—when you find yourself moving in circles, stuck in a cycle you cannot free yourself from—pay attention. To what is different, and what is the same._

So. Here she is—without a mentor. Alone, in a room, trying to pick up the pieces, and at a loss of where to start.

Well. Not alone. There’s Cinis, curled up on a pillow nearby. And Asra and Muriel have both been dropping by every day. Asra keeps asking if she’d like to go into the woods for a while or if she needs anything, and Muriel is always just… there. Silent, but present.

And then there’s the customers—the townspeople. Nearly the moment her shop was open this afternoon, she’d had a lineup out the door. Half those people just seemed like they were checking up on her, more than anything.

She takes a breath, holds it, and lets it go.

So she’s without a mentor again. But she still has a place in this city—she hasn’t been uprooted from her whole life, dragged halfway across the world. She still has Cinis, Muriel, and Asra, Trevor, Asra’s parents, and all the people who visit the shop.

She looks in the mirror, and thinks—thinks about cycles, and things that are different but the same. And then she looks around the room, at her aunt’s things collecting dust, the mess made of the couch where she’s been sleeping, and takes another steadying breath. And then she wipes away the few tears she’s shed with the heel of her palm, before she stands, gets dressed in clean, fresh clothes and ties her still-wet hair up in a bun.

By the time Asra and Muriel knock on the door, she’s set up her distilling equipment, and has started mixing more medicinal tea for Trevor’s mother.

 

Asra is walking Kai back to the palace for the first time in… a long time, tonight.

When Zaru passed, and Jay got sick, Kai refused to leave her side. And when Jay passed, Kai stuck around the shop a while longer—claiming she wanted to go through her Aunt’s things and tidy up, but Asra thinks that she just… didn’t know _what_ to do, except go back.

He and Muriel had both checked on her every day—and the last five, the shop has been open, with Kai frantically trying to restock everything she’s low on. Selasi the baker has been dropping by in the evenings with leftover pumpkin bread since the shop reopened, and she, Asra and Muriel have all scarfed it down, leaning away from counters covered with brewing tonics or distilling oils, or herbs being crushed.

“I didn’t know her stock was so low,” Kai had confessed the first day the shop was open, clearly overwhelmed. “And I didn’t know her notes were so disorganized—I nearly gave someone the wrong pain salve today because she misspelled their name!”

“How low?” Asra had asked. “All these jars look full…”

“Those are the specialty ingredients. For spells and such—the expensive kind. But things that people some here for most of the time—yarrow, sage, witch hazel, dandelion root, valerian…”

She had handed Asra the empty jar of nettle leaf to prove her point.

“And she fell so behind on actually _making_ everything, not to mention how long we were closed for so most people have run out… I don’t have time to go find everything I need, let alone keep up with production.”

Muriel had cleared his throat. “I know where that grows,” he had said. “I could find some for you.”

Asra had watched as Kai’s face lit up with obvious relief. “Could you? That would be—Muriel, that would be _so much help_.

And Asra had watched with amusement as Muriel’s face began to flush. “No big deal,” he had muttered. “I’m... happy to help.”

“Of course I’ll pay you,” Kai had said, darting around the counter again. From under it she had produced a wooden box full of a truly odd assortment of items. A lot of fruit, what looked to be a piece of a fence with flowers drawn on it, and a significant amount of cobalt blue fabric. “With uh. Coin. Which I’ve put somewhere in all this… But you can also pick from this if you like. Some of it is very interesting…”

Muriel had only blushed even more. “You don’t need to… It’s no problem.”

“Of course I’m _paying_ you, Muriel, don’t be ridiculous. Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean you have to run all over the forest picking herbs for me and not get _paid_ for it.”

Her head was down while she dug through the box, and she couldn’t see Muriel’s fond, embarrassed, and _very small_ smile.

Walking beside her now, five whirlwind days of medicine prep later, Asra doesn’t know how Kai hasn’t noticed all the little smiles Muriel has given her over the years. It seems like her head is always down, or she’s always preoccupied, or fussing over her cat or a cut on Muriel’s arm he hadn’t noticed, or teasing Asra or being teased _by_ Asra…

He wonders if Muriel’s noticed all her fussing. How proud she is of him. How his presence calms and steadies her. How all he has to do when she’s overwhelmed is speak up and offer help, and she immediately beams up at him, bright and happy.

Asra’s spent five years noticing. And holding his breath, each and every time—wondering when they will both realise how perfect they are for each other.

“I can’t believe Muriel found so much in five days,” Kai is saying as she turns her pumpkin bread over in her hands. “And I can’t believe how much we _made_ in five days! I think we’re almost fully stocked, Asra!”

“You keep saying that,” he teases. He’s already wolfed down his loaf, as they’d both forgotten to eat at all that day, but his stomach still rumbles. They’ll have missed dinner at this point in the evening, and they’ll have to raid the kitchens on their way back through the palace.

“I’ll have to do something really nice for you both,” she continues, reaching up to scratch Cinis’s chin where he lies across her shoulders. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Not gonna lie, I’ve been really eyeing that decorative fence post…”

She laughs. “I can’t _believe_ my aunt was accepting that as regular payment, but it’s in her notes. What was she doing with them all?”

“Building a fence?”

They both laugh at that—and Kai winds one arm around Asra’s, as comfortable as ever, walking closer to him as a chill wind rises off the ocean and winds its way through the city.

His face grows warm. He… had gotten used to being close to her. They’ve shared a bed for five years—they’ve danced at every anniversary of the wedding that brought them to be friends, as the Nephew of the Count and his Wife, but also as Asra who reads Tarot and Kai who helped her Aunt run her magic shop. And now apparently _runs_ the magic shop.

They haven’t shared a bed for over a month now. But they’ve been crammed in such close quarters the last five days, trying to make as many salves and teas and tonics as they can before people come in and ask for them—and he has noticed an electric shock every time she bumps into him, or slides past him, or their hands touch as they reach to turn off the burner at the same time…

Did her touch always feel like a beam of sunlight after a thunderstorm? Did it always spread warmth through him like curling up next to a fire on a cold day, and he just never noticed until it was gone?

“Did you know that Trevor’s mom gossips about us?”

Asra starts. “Who?”

“You know. Trevor who’s always hanging around—the blonde one, with the little sister. His mom has migraines.”

He doesn’t, but he suspects it doesn’t really matter. “What kind of gossip?”

“Apparently about whether or not we’ll ever get married.”

Asra nearly trips over his own two feet, and Kai bursts out laughing as she steadies him.

“ _Relax_ , Asra!”

“ _Married_? You and me? That’s—I mean we are, technically, I guess, but uh—you know we’re _just friends_ , Kai, I know we’re just friends, anyone could totally see that—”

She’s still laughing. “I’m not done! Apparently the talk of—well maybe not the _town_ but I guess some people who come to the shop—is whether I’m going to marry you or Muriel.”

Asra clears his throat and tries to pretend to be surprised. “Muriel?”

“No one knows his name, they all just call him _the big one_ , or something. Should I start telling people his name?”

“Maybe he would like that.”

She looks up at him, brows furrowed. “Asra, I’m pretty sure Muriel would hate that.”

“Oh, not—I meant like. You know. Getting married.”

She blinks owlishly.

Asra’s face feels like it’s on fire. “You know. To someone. Like people do.”

Kai very suddenly gives him a sly smile. “Well, you know. Now that you mention it, I think he’s interested in someone.”

Asra pretends to cough. “Really? He didn’t say a thing to me.”

“Or me. But I think he’s been sweet on someone for a long time...”

“Would have to be someone close,” he says, nudging her with his elbow.

She tilts her head, and seems to be giving it thought, but her smile is strangely sly. “Oh definitely.”

“Someone he’s known for… years.”

She bites her lip, but it only makes her smile _more_ obvious. “We probably know them, too.”

“We’d have to! I mean, I don’t think he knows anyone we don’t know.”

Kai gives him a look then, an incredibly _fond_ look, before sighing and shaking her head. “I guess we’ll just have to wait until he tell us.”

Asra’s heart twists, and his throat feels tight. “Yeah. We’ll just… wait. I guess.”

“Oh! I never asked, but what did you tell everyone at the palace the whole time I was gone?”

“Oh, Mom just told everyone you were sick. Half the staff thinks you’re pregnant and the other half thinks you’ve eloped with that mysterious guard who only shows up during the Masquerade.”

She giggles. “Oh no—should we tell Muriel that he’s a bit of an urban legend, or would it freak him out?”

“They think he’s a ghost. It would freak him out.”

“Well, you _did_ turn him invisible in the middle of the ballroom.”

“That was _one time!_ He was panicking and we needed to get him out of there!”

“I know! All I’m saying is that didn’t really help the ghost rumours.”

They laugh for a bit, at that. At the memory—and Asra can’t help but think, maybe she should. Maybe “Kalani” _should_ just… elope with a ghost, or something. Disappear. Cause a huge scandal, and never be seen again. Then Kai could live in her aunt’s magic shop, and Muriel could go and find her herbs, and bring them back. And maybe then Muriel and Kai _could_ get married, and Muriel would move into the shop instead of being all alone in the woods…

Asra could visit them both, whenever he liked. That would… that would be nice, he thinks.

“Did anyone try to come visit me?” Kai asks.

“Uh, yeah, mostly the staff. I had to eat a lot of soup and my mom pretended to be you once or twice. Your father’s sent a letter.”

She makes an annoyed noise in the back of her throat. “Why doesn’t he just _stay gone_? What about your uncle?”

“He uh—he was weirdly cool about it at first? Been asking about you a lot recently, though. I think something’s bothering him. He keeps being real weird when we’re not all at court.”

“Weird how?”

Asra reaches up and runs a hand through his hair. “Like… unsettled. I don’t think any of the courtiers notice, just Mom and Dad and I. He keeps looking at your empty chair, like it’s a problem.”

Kai frowns. “I’ve never been very attentive at court before, I don’t see why it should bother him now.”

“Well, this is really long time to be gone. Maybe he’s taking those ghost elopement rumours a little too seriously.”

“ _Ghost elopement._ ”

“Or maybe it’s that army that’s been in the area.”

“Army?”

Asra shrugs. “Some kind of mercenary band. A big one—they’re not near Vesuvia yet, but they’ve been sacking a lot of smaller cities to the west. The Pontifex is worried they’re coming this way.”

“You think they will?”

“Don’t know. The Consul was just arguing that the cities they’ve attacked are nowhere near as big as Vesuvia. They seem to have a couple mages who know some pretty good blocking spells, so Mom’s having a hard time scrying on them. We’re waiting on the latest reports from the scouts.”

She’s still frowning. Cinis starts purring and rubbing his face against her cheek.

“Hey,” Asra says. He pulls his hand from his pocket so he can give hers a squeeze. “It’s not a big deal. They’re probably not even coming this way.”

She exhales slowly. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Vesuvia’s too big, too well protected. A mercenary band wouldn’t risk it.”

Even so, she grips his hand tight a while—and walks a little closer to him than normal, as they lapse into a less than comfortable silence.

He doesn’t mention it. He just holds her hand a while longer, and walks with her, and tries not to worry about it, himself.

 

Life settles into the most bizarre routine Kalani could ever have imagined, after that.

Count Sahir becomes increasingly uneasy the longer she is away from court and council meetings. She attends them when she can, but also tries to keep the shop open at least three days a week. Once the initial rush of orders settle down, people seem fine with that—though it often means late nights for her and Asra, as they struggle to keep stock at a decent level.

Muriel still brings her herbs and other magical ingredients. He brings her water from a clear spring, and spends a whole week collecting enough morning dew to fill a jar, and one day brings an armful of shed antler and sun-bleached bones he’s found around the forest. He brings bark from an ancient tree, from a young tree, moss and lichen, and any number of mushrooms he’s found growing.

Kalani oils the rusty hinges on the shutters and shakes all the dust off the curtains, and she starts opening some of the windows in the shop during the day. It does have the unfortunate effect of highlighting all the dust in the place—and illuminates some of the shop’s more frightening objects a little _too_ well for her taste—so she reorganizes the display items, putting some away in storage and bringing others out that reflect light. Cinis complains that he has fewer places to hide, so she clears off the top shelves a little, which pacifies him. It helps, a little—it’s still too dark by far, and she starts putting money aside for curtains that let more light in.

They turn the back room of the shop into a tarot room—and Asra tells fortunes with the beautiful deck of cards he’s finished, when he’s not napping or helping Kalani maintain stock. He sometimes searches for ingredients with Muriel, on slow days when Kalani kicks everyone out so that she can painstakingly re-write all her aunt’s notes by hand. He and Muriel always show up at the end of the day with baskets full of supplies, and a loaf of pumpkin bread for each of them.

“I got this weird mud,” Asra yells up the stairs one particularly rainy day, shortly after she hears him and Muriel stomping through the door. “I think it’d be great for concealment spells.”

Kalani rolls her eyes affectionately as she stirs the stew on the stove. “Please tell me there’s no snails in it.”

“That was _one time!_ ”

“There aren’t. I checked,” Muriel calls up the stairs in his familiar, rumbling voice.

“Thank you, Muriel. You two are just in time, dinner’s ready!”

Asra runs up the stairs while Kalani thanks the stove salamander, and then she’s distracted by greeting Faust, who insists on having many chin scritches to make up for missing them _all day_. Muriel usually lingers a little when it rains, having to try to dry off Inanna a little and get the mud off her paws, since she doesn’t like Asra doing it. But he and Inanna join them eventually—and of course Kalani has to greet Inanna properly, and scratch her ears and agree how _awful_ it is that her paws have to be wiped, how _awful_ it is to be out in the rain all day.

She looks up to see Muriel lingering at the top of the stairs. He’s still waterlogged from the rain, but he’s smiling as he watches her with Inanna—that fond little smile she’s become familiar with, over the years. The one that makes her chest feel warm, every time she sees it.

One of her regulars was asking about him, today. There was significant eyebrow waggling involved, but Kalani didn’t have the heart to tell them that he’s in love with Asra.

Hard to remember that herself, when he smiles at her like that.

His smiles never lasts long, though. He always catches himself when she sees him. This time is no different, as he mumbles, “Let me get that,” and goes to take a cloth in his hands and lift the pot off the stove.

He sets it on the coffee table that Asra’s already prepared, and then starts to spoon out big, heaping portions for everyone.

“You wouldn’t _believe_ the rain,” Asra says as they all sit down. “It was _pouring_ all over the place. I think the river was three times its normal size today!”

“Not _that_ big,” Muriel corrects, gently.

“You should know, you _fell_ in it.”

Kalani looks back at Muriel with a spike of alarm. “You fell in the river?”                

Muriel blushes, and looks down at his stew.

“We spooked a deer when we were searching for ingredients. It tried to run out into the river to get away, and got stuck. Muriel had to go get it out, but he fell in a couple times getting out there.”

She examines Muriel a little more closely—there’s more than a few holes in his shirt, she can see the beginnings of a few bruises from where he fell, or maybe even from the deer kicking him when he helped it. But none of it looks very serious—he looks as whole and hale as ever.

“You could have been hurt, Muriel,” she tells him, while he avoids her gaze and blushes.

“It wasn’t deep,” he replies, and then promptly stuffs his mouth with stew.

She knows she won’t get any more out of him, so she shakes her head with a fond smile, and then turns to Asra. “While you’re here, do you mind looking at the lamps downstairs? I’d like them to burn a little brighter if you can manage it, it’s still too dark down there to see anything when the sun’s not at the right angle.”

He makes a face. “Your aunt’s spells are so _complicated_. You understand them way better than me—why don’t you give it a try?”

She runs her thumb along the edge of her spoon, and tries to ignore the tightness in her chest. “I’m no good at fire magic,” she tells him.

Asra sighs. He looks at her for a moment like he wants to say something—but then he glances at Muriel.

Muriel levels Asra with a _look_. So Asra only shrugs, and tucks into his food again. “Alright,” he says, “I’ll take a look. But you have to help me figure out the structure—it’s all circles and it makes me dizzy.”

“I think it’s the same basic structure as all her spells—let me grab some paper, I’ll draw it out for you.”

She and Asra finish their food downstairs, bent over paper and charcoal, while she draws and explains the cyclical nature of most of her aunt’s spells. Faust wanders between them as they work, sometimes on her shoulders and sometimes on Asra’s, while Cinis wanders occasionally across the page, getting charcoal paw prints everywhere no matter how many times she scolds him.

At some point, she and Asra take one of the lamps down and take it apart. She holds two of the pieces up so they don’t fall and break, while Asra turns one over and over in his hands—examining the spellwork etched into the glass with a fine, fine knife.

“I don’t think I have anything this fine on me,” he says. “Might have to ask my dad—I think maybe a diamond would do, he has a couple this delicate… I think. This is a weird symbol, d’you know what it means?”

They both lean closer at the same time, and she peers down at the glass.

“Oh, that’s from our family. It’s part of the sun—I have one on my back, if you want to see it bigger.”

Asra clears his throat. She glances over at him—realising that he’s _very_ close, all of a sudden—and sees his cheeks darken.

“Should you uh—should I be learning stuff like this? Family spells and that kind of thing? The only time I heard your aunt talk about it, it seemed like a big deal…”

There’s a dark smudge of old dirt on his cheek—probably from the lantern. So she reaches up and wipes it away with her thumb, without even thinking twice.

His skin is… very soft. And grows warm, under her touch, as his eyes grow wide, and his mouth hangs open a little.

In the half-light, his skin is golden, and his eyes shine brighter than the lepidolite hanging from her throat.

So maybe her hand lingers a little longer than it should. Maybe she stares at his eyes a little longer than she means to—lost in the light they catch, and reflect back at her.

She gives a half-shrug. “You’re family,” she tells him, her voice low, like she’s telling him a secret.

She hears noise at the foot of the stairs—and she and Asra both turn, startled, to see Muriel standing there, pulling his waterlogged cloak from the coat rack by the garden door. Inanna pads over to Kalani and headbutts her shoulder until she reaches up and scratches her behind the ears, holding the glass panels still with one hand.

“Are you going already?” she asks. “You just got here…”

But as soon as the words come out of her mouth, she glances towards the window and finds the street outside dark. The sun’s set—she and Asra must have been down here for an hour at least, without Muriel.

“Muri,” Asra says as Muriel crosses the room to the front door, “why didn’t you come down earlier? You didn’t have to hang around by yourself.”

“Did the dishes,” Muriel grumbles as he swings open the door. “Bye.”

Inanna huffs, and reluctantly leaves Kalani to join Muriel.

“Hold these,” Kalani says, and Asra scrambles to grab the panels before she drops them.

By the time she reaches the door, Muriel’s crossed the street and is nearly in the alley.

“Muriel!” she calls, just as he vanishes around a corner.

She sees Inanna pause and look back, her eyes reflecting the light coming through the open door. But then her dark shape blends in with the shadows and the rain, and Kalani loses track of her too.

She almost chases him, in spite of the rain. Almost. She takes a single step, and her foot nudges against something on the stair—a satchel of herbs, in cloth and twine.

Asra steps past her, shrugging on his coat. “At least this time he _told_ us he was leaving. Muri! Wait!”

He darts off after Muriel, a barrier over his head to shelter him from the rain. He yells Muriel’s name again as he scrambles around the corner, Faust slithering as fast as she can through the mud after him.

Once Asra’s out of sight, Kalani bends down and picks up the satchel. She turns it over in her hands as Cinis jumps up to lie across her shoulders.

“This time,” she murmurs to Cinis.

His tail brushes against her left shoulder blade.

She stands, holds the satchel to her chest, and stands in the doorway a while, looking out into the rain.

 

Asra’s been carving two figurines in his spare time for a while, now. He puts them aside every once in a while, only to pick them up again weeks or months later. He thinks he’s been working on them a year maybe, on and off. He’s not sure.

In the week following Muriel storming out into the rain, Asra has spent every spare moment he has in solitude, Faust napping in his clothes, a knife in hand while he hunches over the figures.

The bear is already complete, and it rests on the rooftop beside him while he etches the last of the jaguar’s spots. It’s almost like he knew the shape of it without having to think on it—because once he settled into finishing it, it seemed to spring to life in his hands.

He’s restarted the jaguar three times, all tolled—the first, because he broke off the tail. The second and third because the pose didn’t feel right. But as he finishes the last of the spots, and gently blows away the sawdust, he turns it over in his hands and knows that it feels… right. The jaguar is sleek and lean, and as he sets it down its body curves protectively around the bear, head turned to look ahead at whatever might be facing them. The jaguar looks alert and attentive, and the bear peaceful, maybe even a little sad.

He looks at them a moment longer, and takes a deep, steadying breath.

It’s been exactly a week since he last saw Muriel. Since he chased Muriel down in the rain, and had tried to explain, stammering— _It’s not like that Muri, there was… I know you like her, I would never—_

 _Go be with her,_ Muriel had snapped, his voice shaking. _Go be with her and forget all about me, just like you want_.

With the sun peeking through the clouds over his head, Asra looks down at the two figurines, his stomach twisting.

His bed is so big, and lonely, the nights that Kai stays at the shop. And it never feels so full or complete but for those nights during the Masquerade where Muriel, exhausted, passes out on the bed with them.

But every year, when the Masquerade is done, Muriel is so clearly _relieved_ to return to the woods. To go back to his life, and his chickens and Inanna. Even when Asra and Kai join him, and take a breather out in the forest just to get away from all the _noise_ , he doesn’t even pretend to mind if, each year, they stay a little longer than the last. They talk late into the night, go out into the fields and watch the stars together, and Kai and Asra always take turns teaching Muriel to dance in the clearing around his home. They spend whole days just exploring, coming back to the hut with arms full of magical ingredients just as often as nothing at all.

Those weeks following the Masquerade, Muriel smiles more. He _talks_ more. He pushes Kai into the water when they go swimming in the hidden spring when she hesitates, and sometimes he spins her when they dance at night, where only Asra can see. Muriel and Asra help Kai comb out her wet hair, and Asra helps Muriel when he’s missed a spot shaving, and when they lie on their backs and watch the stars Muriel asks Asra to tell him all the old stories he used to tell when they were kids.

Sometimes Muriel tells his own stories, from before they met—ones he can only half-remember. And he falters as he does, his voice dropping low and rumbling as he tries to tell them, in a way that makes Asra’s breath catch, every time.

But Kai, eventually, grows restless. She worries about the shop, the garden, or her aunt, and says she misses some of the regular customers, or that Cinis complains that there’s not enough mice to chase. And Asra knows his parents worry when he disappears for a while, and (the older he gets) that he _should_ be learning everything he can from his uncle about running Vesuvia, but…

But.

Muriel grows so sullen, the day they return to the city. And Kai, whenever she is pulled away from her shop back to business at the palace, seems to grow skittish and mousy again, a cloud of uncertainty hanging around her while she sits in meetings and is asked no questions, and does not offer her opinion on state matters. Visiting dignitaries compliment her dress, or ask about her schooling, but she is always looking out the window, her mind clearly on the shop and matters there.

The last thing he wants is to forget about _either_ of them.

But he knows he can’t keep them, either.

Still, he dithers there on the rooftop long enough for clouds to cover the sun, and the first droplets of rain begin to fall. Long enough for Faust to wake, and to sense his distress. His mind buzzes with her wordless, worrying question as she slithers out of his scarf and around his neck, wrapping herself in a single loose coil before rubbing her head against his cheek, affectionately.

 _Sad?_ she asks, when he does not respond.

“I’ll be happy for them,” he lies. But he does linger a little longer, scratching her chin. She offers wordless comfort, trying to swallow his unhappiness with her own contentedness.

Kai’s shop is locked when he arrives, the curtains drawn and only her aunt’s ever-burning magic lanterns to light the room. Asra lets himself in and locks the door behind him, frowning curiously. It’s late afternoon, but Kai’s never closed up before evening, before…

“Kai?” he calls, shrugging off his coat. “Are you home?”

Only silence answers him. He goes to cross the room to hang his coat by the door, when a piece of paper on the counter gives him pause. It’s in Kai’s precise, finely looping writing, the piece of charcoal she used still sitting on the counter next to it.

_Asra,_

_Haven’t seen Muriel in a while, so I went to go bring him some pumpkin bread and check up on him. There’s one for you, too. Stove salamander is keeping it warm._

_See you tonight._

The final letters of _tonight_ are smeared with one of Cinis’s pawprints. He can’t help but smile down at it, even though his heart twists a little.

He takes the figurines out of his bag and gently places them on the counter next to the note. He considers, briefly, picking up the charcoal and leaving a message of his own—but, no. He needs to do this in person, no matter how much he doesn’t want to.

So he goes upstairs, and thanks Stove Salamander for the warm bread. He doesn’t eat it right away—he turns it over and over in his hands, trying not to glance outside at the afternoon sun drawing lower and lower, until the bread is cold in his hands, and Faust is slithering around the room, restless.

 _Forest!_ she insists, vibrating.

“They need space,” Asra replies, just as the lapis stone that hangs around his throat begins to grow warm.

His heart leaps into his throat. He drops the bread on the floor as he scrambles down the stairs and out into the rain—he casts a hasty barrier over himself before kneeling in the wet grass by the reflecting pool, and waits the _agonizing_ minute for the ripples form the rain to die down and for the pool to draw to a complete, total still, its surface as clear as a mirror.

Then he casts the spell, the same one he must have cast a hundred times over the last five years, and waits for the longest five heartbeats of his life for Kai’s face to appear in the reflection. She’s looking down, the ceiling above her the familiar root-and-boards of Muriel’s hut. She looks worried, her hair tied up in a bun at the back of her head like she does when she’s working on herbal remedies.

“Kai,” he blurts, “what happened? Are you okay? Where’s Muri?”

“Asra,” she says, relieved. “Are you at the shop?”

“Yes, but—”

Asra hears a moan. Kai looks over her shoulder, and the surface of whatever water she’s speaking to him through—he suspects a bowl—ripples with her movement. But the spell holds, and she turns back to Asra. “Muriel’s hurt. He tried to clean the wound himself but it got infected. I need to reduce the infection before I can heal it.”

“Hurt? How did he get hurt?”

She’s clearly shaken by the question, and even bites her lip before responding. “I—I’m not sure. He’s got  a bad fever, so he’s not making much sense. I found a helmet in the woods on my way in, but it’s not from the city guard…”

“A fever? How long ago was he hurt?”

“A few days, at _least_. He made me go feed the chickens before he even let me look at it—I need yarrow, for his fever, and tea tree leaves and flax for a poultice. And nettle to numb the area when I clean it—and clean bandages, he’s been using old rags instead of _just asking for help like a normal person_.”

That last is directed over her shoulder.

Muriel grumbles something in response that Asra can’t make out.

“You’re being ridiculous.” She looks back down at the water, biting her lip with worry again. “Come as soon as you can, okay? He’s pretty rough.”

“On my way,” Asra says, before dropping the spell and bolting back into the shop.

He’s spent so many years helping Kai with her work, that by now he doesn’t need to think about where everything is. Bandages in the drawer under the counter, flax in the basket next to the bandages, tea tree leaves on the lowest shelf behind him, and nettle in the middle…

Within the space of a few minutes, he has everything shoved into his bag, Faust safely in his scarf, and he’s bolting out the door. And then he has to turn back around at the end of the block to close and lock the door behind him, before sprinting off again.

He very nearly runs the entire way to Muriel’s house. The forest whips by him in a blur, and even when it grows too dark to see clearly in the rapidly fading light, Asra casts a light spell ahead of him so that he doesn’t trip and fall over tree roots or large stones.

He only stops when he reaches the clearing—and he _aches_ , his skin buzzing with the spells he used to keep himself running full-tilt through the woods, no matter how exhausted he was. His limbs ache and he’s so out of breath that he’s taking deep, desperate gulps of air—but he can see Muriel’s hut now, the door ajar, and light from a fire burning inside.

As he approaches, and tries to catch his breath, he hears Kai talking.

“Muriel, I need you to stay still. Asra will be here soon, and then we’ll get you feeling better.”

“… Not coming,” is Muriel’s rumbling, utterly miserable reply.

“Of course he is, I _just_ talked to him.”

“Told him not to.”

Kai lets out an aggravated sigh. “Is this why I haven’t seen you in a week? Because you and Asra had a fight?”

 “… Not a fight.”

“Unbelievable. And what were you fighting about that was such a big deal you had to either bleed out or die from an infected wound to prove your point?”

But Muriel doesn’t respond. Asra nudges the door open, breath in his throat, and sees Kai kneeling beside Muriel’s bed, Muriel on his back, pale and pallid, his eyes glazed over by the fog of fever and his brow covered in sweat. Inanna lies by the fire, and she sees Asra immediately, but makes no move to alert Kai or Muriel—she just watches him a moment, before glancing back at Muriel.

“Just the two of you… always just the two of you.”

Kai scowls. She presses a wet cloth to Muriel’s brow, ignoring his weak flinch at the contact. “What are you talking about?”

“When he’s with you, nothing else matters.”

“That’s not true. Muriel—”

She is startled into silence when he reaches up with one shaking hand, and cups the side of her face in his palm. His thumb rests on her lips, which hang slightly open, her eyes wide with surprise.

Asra’s heart stutters in his chest.

Muriel looks up at Kai, feverish, but so, _so_ desperate. His face twisting in pain and despair.

“Now it’s only a matter of time… Before you vanish into your world together.”

Kai only stares down at him.

“I can’t…” His voice breaks, and he takes a shuddering breath. “I can’t watch it happen. I _can’t_.”

Muriel wavers a moment—the kind of waver that makes Asra think he’s about to collapse back onto the bed. But then, all of a sudden, he leans up, and presses his lips to Kai’s.

Asra’s heart _hammers_ against his ribcage, and he takes in a sharp, desperate breath.

Muriel falls back onto the bed, and his hand drops from Kai’s face. She turns, wide-eyed, and when she sees Asra she just stares at him, for the space of several frantic heartbeats.

“Asra,” she blurts. “I—when did you—?”

“Brought everything,” he says, louder than he means to. He walks into the hut only far enough to shove his bag into Kai’s arms, before turning and walking back out again.

“Where are you going?”

He doesn’t look back as he says, “I have to—to go. There’s a meeting, Mom and Dad need me. It’s important. Sorry.”

He walks back out into the rain. He tries to cast his barrier spell over his head, but his hand starts shaking, and his magic fizzles uselessly at his fingertips.

“Wait!”

He keeps walking. The rain quickly soaks his hair, and Faust complains curling tighter into his clothing to escape the damp.

Behind him, he hears Kai’s footsteps on the wet earth as she follows him. “Asra—can we just _talk_ about this?”

“We can talk later.”

“Asra—can you _look_ at me?”

She reaches for his arm, but she shakes off her touch. But he does turn, taking slow, uneven steps backwards as he does, trying to keep far enough away so that she can’t reach for him again. “Go back inside, Kai. Muri— _Muriel_ needs your help.”

“He needs you too, Asra,” she blurts. She’s probably still soaked through from her journey out here, and she’s already starting to shiver in the rain, and she wraps her arms around herself, lacking a shawl or coat to protect her.

His hair is already plastered to his forehead, and when he blinks water away from his eyes he’s not sure if it’s rain or tears. “Not like you,” he says, his voice catching, as he turns on his heel and walks away.

“Asra!”

He does not reply. He flips up the collar of his coat against the rain, and walks off towards the city. Ignoring how she calls his name, again and again—until the moment he knows he’s out of sight. Then he takes off, his aching muscles _screaming_ in protest. He runs until he can’t hear her any more. Runs in whatever direction he started in, sprinting through the trees and the undergrowth, branches whipping past him.

He collapses eventually, his body exhausted—he’s been running, non-stop, since he talked to Kai in the reflecting pool. He takes wretched, gasping breaths, and finds shelter under a broad-leafed tree, only the occasional trickle of rainwater snaking through its branches to fall on him.

The lapis stone around his throat grows warm—so he takes off the necklace, and stuffs it in his pocket.

He tugs his knees up to his chest, and buries his face in his arms and _weeps_ , finally, great ugly sobs that make his whole body shake, and tremble. Faust winds herself around him, trying her best to squeeze him, even as she shakes with the force of their shared grief.

_Asra..._

“I’m not ready,” he chokes out. “I thought—I thought I was ready, but I’m not. I want them to be happy but I can’t… I’m going to lose them, Faust. I’m going to lose them both.”

_Go back!_

He lets out a pained laugh that sounds more like a sob. “I can’t. I _can’t_.”

Faust coils tighter around him then, as he cries too hard to speak. She radiates wordless comfort, and does not try to convince him to go back again—no matter how much he wishes she would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **cedarmoons:**  
>  I AM GOING TO TEAR L***O APART  
> WITH MY B A R E H A N D S
> 
> If you don't know who Trevor is, he also appears in [Reversed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493776). He's probably the greatest thing Theia's ever given me, if we're gonna be real.


	6. Corona

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **See end notes for content warnings for this chapter.**

Kai stays with Muriel for four days before he’s well enough for her to return to her shop.

The whole first day she’s pretty sure he won’t even remember. After she cleans his wound he sleeps in fits and starts, until the yarrow starts to work and his fever breaks, sometime in the blackest hour of the night. She watches him sleep while she sits on the floor, her weak magelight catching in the lines of sweat that have run down his brow, a bowl of water on the floor beside her and the lepidolite pendant in her hand.

She thinks of Asra, over and over, clutching it so hard her knuckles are white. _I want to speak to you. I want to speak to you_. _Please._

The bowl of water only shows her own reflection.

By the fourth day, Muriel is lucid. When there is a break in the rain, he mumbles something about checking on his chickens before going outside. As she packs up her belongings, and some shirts Muriel needs mended, she hears him chopping wood—even though she had explicitly told him not to strain himself. But she can only shake her head, wrap herself in her shawl, and throw her bag over her shoulder.

She hesitates in the doorway when she sees him. He’s shirtless now. The shirt he’d worn—the last one without any holes in it—had been so soaked through with his own blood that she had just burned the damn thing. She can see the long, jagged scar running across his side, pink and new against his skin. She couldn’t help the scar—he’d gone too long without help that she suspects even Aisha’s healing spells couldn’t have avoided it.

Muriel claims he doesn’t remember what made it, and she doesn’t know enough about healing to even guess. She doesn’t like it—she’s spent the last few days thinking of the oils she makes to reduce stretch marks for a few of her customers, and wondering if her aunt had anything written down about scars, and how to treat them.

As she stares at it now, at how it pulls at his skin when he moves, she can only think of finding him, curled up next to his weak fire, Inanna trying to keep him warm…

He turns, suddenly, and she hurriedly looks up at his face. He’s reaching up to wipe the sweat from his brow, his breathing heavy after only splitting a few logs. But he doesn’t look dizzy, she thinks, even as her gaze drops to his lips—slightly parted, as he catches his breath.

A thought occurs to her, rogue and unbidden—she knows exactly how they feel against hers.

Muriel’s brow furrows.

Her face grows warm, and she busies herself with the strap of her bag. “I’ll mend your shirts for you,” she blurts, “though I think you’ll need new ones soon.”

It takes him a moment to respond. “Don’t bother. They’ll just rip again.”

“You need to wear a shirt, Muriel.”

He ignores her. She hears him grunt, and when she glances up he’s bending down to set another log for chopping.

“I’ll tell Asra you’re feeling better.”

He lets out a short breath.

She wrings her hands together. She can’t stop looking at his lips.

“Do you. Um.”

He does not look at her. He just raises the axe over his head, and cleaves the log in two. “What?”

She bites her lip. “Nothing. I’ll—I’ll bring you something for that scar tomorrow. Okay?”

Muriel looks like he’s about to say something. But he glances over at her, and his expression softens. He meets her gaze for a moment—just a moment—before he looks back down. “Thanks.”

“I can come back tonight if you want. You can—you can come with me, now. If you want.”

He looks down at the axe. And then he bends down, picks up another log, and places it on his stump. “Have to chop wood.”

“Oh. Okay.” She grips the strap of her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He does not reply.

It’s a long, lonely walk home. The rain picks up again when she reaches the city, and Cinis cries until she lets him ride on her shoulders, under her barrier.

When she finally reaches her shop, she can feel the full effects of sleeping on the floor for the last three nights—when she’d slept at all. She locks the door behind her while Cinis jumps off her shoulder to the counter.

He makes a curious _mrr_ noise, low in his throat. Then she hears him pawing at something, making it scrape across the glass.

When she turns, he’s knocked a little wooden figure over. She shoos him away, and ignores his chatter of complaint as she reaches down to right it. A bear, she sees—and with it a jaguar, with a delicate tail and intricately etched spots. Both of them sitting next to the note she left for Asra.

She looks around, but there’s no fox figure to go with them.

“Oh, Asra,” she says, softly. She runs a hand through her hair, and takes a long, deep breath.

She takes the figurines upstairs with her. She places them on her dresser, and then makes Cinis promise not to knock them over. She finds the uneaten pumpkin bread Asra dropped on the floor, and Cinis chases the mice it’s attracted with glee while she gets rid of it. She gets water from the garden and scrubs herself down, and combs oils through her hair, and then dresses herself in a clean nightgown before she collapses into her bed.  

She doesn’t fall asleep right away—Cinis curls up at the small of her back, and she lies on her side and stares up at the figurines. How they were carved to fit together, so perfectly…

And she can’t help but think of a conversation she had with her aunt, five years ago now. Jay had been leaning on the windowsill, Zaru on her shoulder, and Kalani had been searching for scissors to clip the aloe plant.

_That Muriel’s awfully protective of you and Asra, isn’t he?_

_What do you mean?_

_Oh, you know. He and Asra have known each other for so long, they must be very close._

_Close?_

_And Asra plays the doting spouse better than most married couples I know. They’re good kids, Kai. You’re luckier than you know to have fallen in with them._

All of Muriel’s lingering glances, why he would stick around Vesuvia at all if he hated the city so much… She had thought her aunt was telling her that Muriel was in love with Asra—it had seemed so obvious at the time.

And he is. In love with Asra. Beautiful Asra, who looks like moonlight come to life, and laughs like a bubbling stream. Brilliant Asra, who invents spells she’s never heard of and married her to save her from her father when he barely knew who she was. Asra who is perfect for Muriel in every way, so much that it makes her heart _hurt_ that she can’t just tell him.

But Muriel kissed _her_.

She thinks of Asra’s face, the way he looked like he had so desperately been trying not to cry… She tugs at the lepidolite pendant, but it’s still cold in her hand.

“I think I screwed up,” she whispers to Cinis.

He stirs a little. Then he stretches, and gets up, climbs over her and burrows under her arm to stretch alongside her chest, tucking his face into her neck.

_Think too much,_ he tells her, sleepily.

She sighs. “Easy for you to say.”

_It is_ , he agrees. And then he burrows a little closer to her, and starts to purr. He keeps purring until her exhaustion catches up with her, and she finally closes her eyes and slips off to a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

The next morning, she does not light the lamp outside. She gets right to work on a salve for Muriel—she has an oil for him to work into the skin, and she’s just pouring the last of a salve she _thinks_ will reduce the appearance of the scar into a jar when she hears someone banging on the door.

“Miss Kai!” Trevor calls through the door. “Miss Kai! Are you in there?”

She screws the lid on the jar with a sigh. “If I were his mother I’d have migraines too,” she grumbles to Cinis.

Cinis quickly jumps from the bookshelf to his favourite spot in the rafters, chittering in excitement the whole while.

“Don’t jump on him,” she scolds, skirting around the counter to head to the door. She opens it, and Trevor stands on the doorstep, hand raised to pound on the door again.

“Miss—Miss Kai! Oh good, you’re home! I came last night but you weren’t here, I was so worried!”

“Hello, Trevor. Did your mother run out of tea again?”

“Oh—oh no, it’s not my Mom. It’s Em, my sister? She’s got this fever, and her nose is running, and she’s not eating…”

He looks beside himself with worry. So Kalani smiles, and steps aside to let him in. “It sounds like something the dock kids all caught last week. She’s made some new friends?”

“You… could say that. She keeps trying to _fight_ them, Miss Kai, it’s making my mother tear her hair out.”

She can’t help a laugh. “She’s _definitely_ making friends. Hang on, I think I still have something left…”

“Thanks _so much._ You’re a lifesaver.”

She finds the appropriate drawer, and opens it to find it still well stocked—she’d made a bag batch, expecting a second wave of sniffly-nosed dock kids sheepishly knocking on her door. Though she supposes Trevor won’t be the only hand-wringing big brother knocking, if his little sister has spread it to the other children.

“Brew this like your mother’s tea,” she tells him, handing over a small satchel. “Shouldn’t need more than that, the other cases all cleared up after a couple days. Make sure she drinks lots of clean water, and that she gets plenty of rest until she feels better.”

He clutches it to his chest, and then digs around in his pocket. “I will, definitely. Listen, I sort of don’t have any money on me…”

“Bring me an apple sometime,” she tells him, fondly.

Before Trevor can reply, Muriel bursts through the open door, Inanna hot on his heels.

Trevor scrambles backwards to get out of his way, while Muriel looks directly to Kalani at the counter, his eyes wide, his face pale.

“Muriel?” she blurts, looking him up and down. He’s just thrown his cloak over his shoulders, and he’s still not wearing a shirt, so she can see his chest heaving, as if he’s been running. “What’s wrong? I told you not to strain yourself—”

“We have to go,” he says, coming around the counter to take her hand. He holds it tighter than normal, and his hand is shaking. “ _Now_.”

“Go?” she parrots, while Cinis yowls in irritation from the rafters. “Go where? Is Asra in trouble?”

He starts to gently, but urgently, guide her towards the door. “We _all_ are. We have to get Asra and go before it’s too late.”

“Muriel—what?” She stands her ground, and resists his tugging when he tries to lead her out the door. “What is going _on_?”

He tugs again, _gently_ , but his eyes are wild. He’s _terrified_ , she realises, more than she’s ever seen him.

“The helmet,” he says. “I found it. He—the man who attacked me. He’s coming this way.”

Before she can shake her head and ask Muriel for any more details, the lepidolite hanging around her neck grows warm. She reaches for it, and Muriel’s eyes grow even wider.

“Asra,” she says.

She tugs Muriel back into the shop, and leads him back into the garden.

Even before she casts a barrier over the reflecting pool, she can see Asra’s image trying to form in its rainfall-distorted surface. She and Muriel crouch over it, hearing Asra’s warped voice slowly settle as the water draws still.

“… been ignoring you _please I need to talk to you_.”

“Asra!”

“Kai! Muriel!” He glances over his shoulder, and Kai can hear the clamor of voices rising from somewhere behind him. She can make out the council chamber behind him—the colour of everything is off, though, and it takes her a moment to realise that he’s talking to her through a cup of tea.

He leans in closer, so close his breath casts tiny ripples all over the image of his face as he whispers, “You need to get out of the city as soon as you can. They’re going to close the gates and I don’t know how much time is left—”

“Asra, what’s going on?”

“There’s an army heading this way,” Asra says. “They’ll reach the city before noon. There’s—there’s _so many,_ Kai, please, you need to _go._ ”

“We have an army too,” she starts to say, but Muriel puts a hand on her shoulder.

“They’re marauders,” he explains. “They… they leave nothing behind, Kai. Nothing.”

“Marauders?” Trevor calls. When she looks up, he’s standing in the doorway, wringing his hands. “That uh. That sounds bad. Coming _here_?”

“Go into the woods,” Asra says. “You and Muriel. I’ll—I have to stay with Mom and Dad, but you—you have to go, _please_.”

But she just keeps looking at Trevor. His face pale, his eyes wide, his throat bobbing as he swallows, the satchel clutched in his white-knuckled fist.

_They leave nothing behind._

“I’m not leaving,” she says.

“Kai, I didn’t hear you—”

“I’m not leaving this city.” She turns back down to Asra’s projected image. “We’re coming to you. Stay put.”

“Kai—”

She splashes reflecting pool as hard as she can, and Asra’s spell falters, and fails.

She hurries back inside. She goes under the counter and pulls out the crate that holds all her bandage and poultice supplies, puts it on the counter, and grabs the blue fabric someone had traded her too for good measure. She grabs everything that could be used to wrap a wound or stop bleeding, and then she thrusts it all into Trevor’s arms.

“Uh? Miss Kai?”

“Go straight to your mother,” she tells him. “You get her and you get home, and you do not open your door for anything. Right?”

He swallows. “Yeah. Right—what’s all this for?”

She takes a deep breath. Then she pulls a key out of her pocket, and hands it to him. “This key will get you in the back door. You’ll have to climb the back wall, but Asra’s got hand holds carved out. Look for those.”

“I thought you said _don’t_ leave—”

“Your mother’s tea is in this drawer, here—see where I’m pointing?”

Tears are starting to form in his eyes. “But—I can’t grab that, not without paying…”

“All my records are here,” she continues, pointing to a slim shelf Muriel had built her. “Bring someone here who can read. They can help you figure out how to mix more. This—” she pulls out a slim book, in her own neat handwriting and filled with Asra’s meticulous diagrams, and tucks it into the box, “is full of wound treatments. It tells you how to stop bleeding, how to keep a wound from gangrene, and how to keep a fever down. Are you listening?”

“Yes, but I don’t _understand_ —”

“When the fighting stops, I need you and your mother to help as many people as you can. When you run out of supplies, bring them here, and get more where you can. Okay? Can you do that for me, Trevor?”

He goes still for a moment. He considers her, and she considers him— _fifteen_ , she thinks, and it breaks her heart a little.

“Only until you come back,” he says, his voice breaking. “When—when you come back, you’ll show us how to do it right. Okay?”

She throws her arms around his shoulders, tugging him into a hug so fierce that the box he’s holding digs painfully into her chest.

“Now go,” she tells him. “Tell your mother everything I told you. Go!”

Trevor bolts into the street while Muriel hovers uncertainly over her shoulder.

She takes a deep, shaking breath. Muriel takes her hand again, and she returns his grip, tight and firm, before she steps out into the street, and locks the door behind them.

 

Asra doesn’t think it’s ever been this loud in the council room.

Everyone is talking over each other all at once, constantly. Messengers are running in and out at a frantic pace, and someone keeps bringing tea but Asra’s had three cups already and he’s too jittery by far to drink any more. So he stands to the side of everything, his back to windows and the plains that stretch beyond the palace, and tries his best to stay out of the way.

His hand keeps going to the lapis hanging from his throat—and he hopes beyond all hope that Muriel has talked some sense into Kai, and they have left.

Faust is hiding in his scarf, trembling with worry.

His mother and father are looking over a map of the palace she’s conjured from air. The Courtiers have been huddling over it and dealing with the messengers as best they can in turns.

But the count only stands next to Asra at the window. He does not face the chaos in the room; instead he looks out at the mercenary army assembling in the fields in the shadow of the palace. His hands are clasped behind his straight, straight back, his expression utterly blank in a way that strikes Asra as strangely, hauntingly familiar.

“The shield spells haven’t been _tested_ ,” Salim is saying. “And we only have enough repeaters for the palace, not the city.”

The Pontifex is pacing, and he’s chewed his thumb nail down to nothing. “What is the progress on the installation of the repeaters we _do_ have?”

“We are at fifty percent,” Aisha replies. She waves her hand, and a number of spots on the map light up.

“And how many hits could the shields take?”

“That’s what I’ve been _saying_.” Salim pushes his glasses further up his nose with a shaking hand. “We don’t _know_. Magical attacks? Physical attacks? I don’t have an answer for you because there _isn’t_ one. This shield system is purely theoretical, we have no idea if it will even work at all at a large scale—”

“Then why are we _building_ it?”

“Because _you_ demanded it!”

“ _Enough_ ,” Aisha snaps, right as the Pontifex and Salim look about to descend into a new wave of bickering. “We don’t have much time. Have the citizens been alerted?”

The Consul, in the middle of accepting a report from a messenger, speaks without even looking up. “Lady Aisha, we have sent runners telling people to return to their homes. All entrances to the city and the palace have been barred and are under guard, and our troops are assembled and awaiting further orders.”

The messenger gives a shallow bow, then leaves—and Asra can see them reach the door out of the corner of his eye, and can see them pause, then step aside and hold it open with another, more formal bow.

His breath catches in his throat, and he turns just as Kai and Muriel walk through the door.

Kai is wearing one of her formal gowns—deep blue, with ivory accents—and has hastily tied up some of her hair, and just enough makeup not to look suspicious. The only visible jewellery she wears is a pair of ruby earrings, though he can spy a brief shimmer that must be the silver chain of the lepidolite necklace where she’s tucked it into her dress.

Muriel stands behind her, in that guard’s uniform he wears every Masquerade. He appears to have slicked back his hair with water, in a hurry, as it’s already starting to revert to its usual messy state. He does not wear his mask, and Asra can read how overwhelmed Muriel is as clear as day as he surveys the rooms with wide, panicked eyes.

“Oh good,” the Pontifex exclaims. “The spineless one _finally_ decided to show up.”

Kai narrows her eyes at him. She looks about to say something cutting, but she bites her lip instead, her hands balling into fists.

Asra can’t see Cinis, as he’s not riding on her shoulder, but he can hear the cat’s low, angry growl.

“I’m here to help in any way I can,” is what she finally says, her voice shaking.

The count tenses, for half a heartbeat—and then his shoulders droop, ever so slightly, his eyes slipping shut.

“You can help by _staying out of the way_ ,” the Pontifex snaps.

“You’ll not speak to my daughter in law like that,” Aisha informs him icily.

“Kalani, I’m glad you’re here,” Salim says. “Could you show me that trick you did with my work lamp? I need to make it work on a _much_ larger scale, _very_ quickly.”

Kai’s eyes grow wide. She takes a deep, steadying breath, then nods. “Of—of course. I’ll try my best. Does anyone have paper?”

As Kai and Salim huddle over the table, Kai drawing on the back of a map with charcoal and Muriel hovering nearby, Asra feels his uncle’s hand clasp over his shoulder.

His uncle is trying to smile—but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Count Sahir,” someone yells from the door. “I have—I have a message from the mercenary army.”

Everyone turns at once. There’s a messenger standing at the door, holding a missive. She hesitates, as the cacophony in the room dies down to an utter silence, before clearing her throat nervously, and looking back to the count.

Sahir nods. “Speak. Please.”

“It’s—it’s the leader. Their… _warlord_ , he calls himself. He says he wishes to enter the city with a small party, for an audience with the court.”

“Interesting.” Sahir’s eyes narrow. “And did he say _what_ he wished that audience for?”

The messenger swallows. “He… he wishes to challenge you to a duel, my lord.”

The room erupts into a cacophony of noise. Everyone seems to be shouting all at once—the Pontifex declares that they will fight in the Count’s stead, and actually moves to draw their sword before the Consul yells to think about _where_ they are. Salim seems to be trying to get everyone to calm down, and Aisha looks to Asra, her face drawn with worry.

Kai is holding Muriel’s hand in a white-knuckled grip, looking at Asra with a frightened expression.

Muriel, however, is looking at the Count—his brows furrowed in confusion.

“That will be enough,” Sahir says, loud enough that everyone stalls, and the noise starts to die down again. “Pontifex, send your most trusted soldiers to escort this warlord to the great hall.”

Aisha looks _stricken_. “Sahir, you can’t mean—”

“I mean to resolve this with as little bloodshed as possible,” Sahir interrupts her, his hand falling from Asra’s shoulder. “If this warlord wants a duel, then he shall have it—if it means Vesuvia is spared any amount of violence, then that is the course we will take.”

“But, my lord,” the Pontifex starts. “Our armies can handle this. With no danger to you at all—”

“I have made my decision.” The count finally steps forward, and crosses the room in quick, even strides. He hesitates a moment as he passes Kai, though Asra can’t see his expression.

Sahir leans in, a hand on her shoulder, and whispers something in her ear.

And then he pulls away, and walks right out of the room, without looking at or saying anything to anyone on his way.

Cinis jumps up on Kai’s shoulder—and she pets his fur absently, frowning, while Asra makes his way over to her. She doesn’t notice him until he very gently touches her arm, and then she reaches for his hand, squeezing tight.

She’s still holding Muriel’s. Luckily, everyone seems too busy to notice as they file out of the room, following the Count.

“There’s a back way out,” Asra whispers in her ear. “It’s magic, I don’t think anyone knows about it. I can lead you out.”

Kai takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. Her hand is shaking in his.

Muriel shifts his weight, leaning closer. “These people… they chased my family away from our home. The Count _can’t_ win against him. We have to go.”

Asra shoots Muriel a grateful glance. “Muriel will protect you, it’s okay—”

“Can you get every single person in this city out your secret back way? Every servant in this palace?”

Asra stalls.

She opens her eyes, and meets his gaze directly, without hesitation. There’s a determination in her eyes he can’t remember ever seeing before this moment—and it burns in her aura like a spark, like a match struck in the dark, a single flame growing brighter with each passing moment.

“This city is my home,” she tells him. “I won’t abandon it. Not when I could have helped.”

She drops his and Muriel’s hands, and in a whirl of navy and ivory fabric she storms off after the Count.

 

The warlord named Lucio arrives at Vesuvia’s court with two of his own warriors, flanked on all sides by city guards.

He wears a bright red coat, with a dramatic cape hanging over his left arm from a heavy cowl of fur. He grins at everyone he sees as he is led into the room with a too-large smile that does not reach his eyes.

The court is silent as he approaches. No one whispers—no one says anything at all.

Asra keeps looking over at Kai. She’s sitting on her chair next to his, fingernails digging into the armrests. Cinis is perched on its back, and the little cat seems to grow a little larger, his shadow a little darker, and his eyes a little brighter with each step Lucio takes closer to the Count’s throne, and the chairs of his family around him.

Muriel stands off to the side, just in Asra’s line of sight—he had tried to stand behind Kai’s chair, but the Pontifex barked at him to stand with the other guards. He sticks out among them, easily the tallest in the room by far, and every time Asra glances at Kai he can see Muriel too, and he looks _terrified_.

“Let’s get down to business, then,” Lucio says without preamble, standing before the count.

“I believe expediency would be prudent,” the count agrees.

Lucio flashes that eerie, utterly unfriendly smile. “Alright then, here’s the deal—you have a city. I’ve decided I’d like it. I’m prepared to slaughter every man, woman, and child in it to get it, but I’ll settle for a friendly duel with you. That _expedient_ enough for you?”

Asra’s stomach twists. He glances sideways at his uncle, but the count only nods sagely, and smiles politely.

“Of course. However—as you might have noticed, I am not precisely in as such peak physical condition as yourself.”

Lucio just keeps grinning. “Few are.”

“Would you permit, perhaps, duelling someone from my family in my stead? Any of them would be willing to stand against you in battle—each a talented magician, an equal match for your sword.”

For the first time since walking into the room, Lucio pauses and takes them all in. His gaze sweeps over Asra’s family, one by one—the count, on his left Aisha and then Salim, and then to his right Asra, then Kai.

His gaze rests a moment longer on Kai. His eyes narrow, and he tilts his head slightly before looking back once more to Sahir.

“And I would choose?” he drawls, low and calculated.

A chill runs up Asra’s spine. Faust curls tighter around his neck.

Uncle Sahir’s polite smile has not faltered once. “Certainly.”

“And when I win, you agree to give the city over to me?”

“In the event of your victory, the rest of my family would leave the city immediately and you would be free to do with it as you wished. However, in the event of _our_ victory, you and your army would agree to vacate Vesuvia and its territories entirely, harming none of its lands or people.”

Lucio doesn’t even seem to be giving a thought to the possibility of losing. “And the duel will be to the death?”

At that, his uncle hesitates. Only for half a heartbeat, and his eyes narrow slightly, as if finally pausing to take the measure of the man before him.

“You don’t want to do that, son,” Sahir says, softly.

Lucio’s smile twists, just enough that it _almost_ looks like a snarl of rage, before shifting back again. “To the death. I _insist_.”

Sahir sighs. “Very well,” he says, gesturing with a sweep of his hand. “Which of my family—”

Lucio draws his sword and, with a grand flourish, points the tip directly at Kai. “That one.”

Asra launches to his feet. “No!”

“Absolutely not!” Salim shouts.

“Coward!” Aisha spits.

Cinis hisses, all his fur on end and appearing nearly twice his normal size as he arches his back. Kai doesn’t even move—she just stares at Lucio with an expression that reminds Asra of when she was brought to court by her father, all those years ago.

Lucio’s grin only grows. “I suppose her little cat can help, too.”

“I’ll fight in her stead,” Asra insists, looking Lucio dead in the eye. “Unless you’re scared of a _real_ challenge.”

 “Sit down, Asra,” Sahir says, not even glancing away from Lucio.

“No—”

“Asra,” Kai says, and he immediately turns back to her.

She’s standing, slowly, a growling Cinis already stepping onto her shoulder. She reaches up to touch his fur with a trembling hand, and he gives up on glaring at Lucio a moment to rub his face against her cheek.

“He gets to choose,” she continues, her voice shaking. “Those are the terms.”

“They’re _bullshit_ ,” Asra starts to say—but Kai reaches for his hand, and pulls him close so she can tuck their joined hands against her chest.

He can feel the frantic beating of her heart under her skin. He reaches, instinctively, for the small of her back, guiding her closer still—as if this is another masquerade, and they’re just dancing.

She rests her head against his chest, and he buries his face in her hair. She’s not wearing her perfume—she smells like sweat, and dust, and fear—but he closes his eyes and breathes her in all the same, his fingers curling into the small of her back, his heart racing to match the pace hers sets, under their joined hands.

Faust pokes her head out of Asra’s scarf, and tries to nuzzle Kai’s cheek.

“Faust,” she says, her voice breaking, “look after Asra.”

“Don’t do this,” he whispers.

She takes a shuddering breath. “Asra, I—”

Lucio’s voice rings out in the utter silence of the room. “I’m _waiting_.”

Whatever she had been about to say, her courage seems to have vanished. She shakes her head, and whispers, “Take care of Muriel,” before pulling back with great reluctance.

He tries, desperately, to hold her hand. To keep her close—he tries to say her name but there are so many people watching, both her names just catch on his tongue and he can’t say _either_. So he just stares after her, uselessly, as his fingertips catch on hers for half a heartbeat before she slips away.

“ _Finally_ ,” Lucio drawls with a smile, lifting his sword to rest the blade on his shoulder. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

Asra perches on the edge of his chair. His fingernails dig deep gouges into the armrests.

Kai stands uncertainly across the marble floor from Lucio. Cinis rubs his face against her cheek, and she takes a deep, unsteady breath, before nodding once.

When the duel is called, Lucio launches himself at Kai without a moment’s hesitation.

She raises a barrier—Lucio’s sword collides against it, sending sparks of magic flying through the air, but it holds.

Cinis darts around her, unnoticed by Lucio as he takes another swing.

Kai’s knees buckle, but again the barrier holds. Asra can see her mouth twist in determination, and her barrier flares as she pours more magic to it.

But Lucio only grins—and he lurches forward, reaching with his left arm, previously covered by his cape. The moment his arm comes in contact with the barrier, Kai’s magic flares—and his cape blows backwards from the force of it, exposing an arm made of metal instead of flesh, and glowing brightly with magic.

It’s hardly elegant. It’s an ugly thing made of large ungainly cogs and unfinished iron. But it _is_ enchanted, and it _does_ function—and each finger is tipped with long, pointed claws, which dig into the surface of Kai’s barrier, no matter how bright it flares.

Kai must see her barrier about to fail, because she sidesteps as she drops it.

Lucio turns on his heel and reaches for her. She scrambles backwards, and his claws tear a long gash through the sleeve of her dress.

As she stumbles away, clutching her arm, Asra sees drops of blood on the white tile at her feet.

Lucio _laughs_.

“Is that all you have, little magician?” he taunts. He starts to circle her, swinging his sword in a lazy arc. “You’ll have to do better than that if—”

Cinis, nothing more than a tiny streak of black fur and angry orange eyes, launches himself at the back of Lucio’s head.

Lucio _screams._ He nearly drops his sword, and reaches up with his metal hand to try to get Cinis off—but the cat’s too fast, moving over to Lucio’s right side and shredding the side of his neck with his claws, spitting and snarling.

Kai throws her arm out, and the ground below Lucio begins to shift. The tiles tremble, then crack, and then burst open entirely to reveal old, gnarling tree roots. They snake out of the floor at an unnatural speed, winding around Lucio’s legs. He tries to slash at them, furiously, but the roots snake up and around his arm, surprisingly resilient, and he is forced to let the weapon go as it is slowly, steadily, encased in a living prison.

Cinis sinks his teeth into Lucio’s ear, and tears half of it clean off.

Lucio howls in rage and pain. Now that both his hands are free he reaches for Cinis, but the cat only leaps off his shoulder and dashes away. He spits the ear out on the floor, and Asra swears he’s never seen that cat look so smug in his life, blood dripping from his mouth and claws.

The roots start to wind up Lucio’s sword arm—and he curses, yanking _hard_ , as the roots curl tighter and tighter around him, trying to pin his arm to his side. He claws at them with his metal arm—iron claws raking into the roots, yanking and pulling, but he can’t seem to tear them apart fast enough. They keep growing, and curling, and winding tighter around him, no matter how frantically he tries to free himself.

Cinis jumps on the back of his neck again, tearing into his exposed skin. Lucio snarls, swiping with his claws—but the cat only jumps away again, skidding on the floor, and darting around to Lucio’s back, his tail flicking as he waits for his next chance to strike.

“Yield!” Kai shouts, as the roots finally pin Lucio’s sword arm to his side. “I don’t want to kill you!”

But Lucio only barks out a low, frantic laugh. He holds his iron arm out—and a strange, cold white light begins to seep out through all its seams, casting Lucio’s face in twisted, gnarling shadows.

“You think this is over, little girl?” he taunts. “We’re just getting _started_.”

He tears through the roots pinning him in place with one mighty swipe of his claws.

Kai takes a step back, startled.

Lucio lunges for her.

She throws up a barrier—but Lucio slams his now-gleaming fist into it, and Asra watches as it simply _vanishes_. Lucio’s fist carries through, striking Kai square in the jaw. She hits the floor with a cry.

Asra launches to his feet.

Uncle Sahir grabs his wrist. “Sit _down_ , Asra,” he hisses.

Asra yanks once, hard, unable to tear his eyes from the fight—but his uncle does not let go.

Lucio stalks after Kai—and Asra watches as Kai tries to scramble backwards, roots popping up between the cracks in the tile and trying to tangle around Lucio’s legs, but he’s moving too fast for them to find any purchase.

Just as he reaches her, and raises his arm, Cinis leaps up at the back of his neck again.

This time, however, Lucio whirls, striking Cinis with the back of his iron hand.

“Cinis!” Kai screams.

Cinis flies backwards and hits the ground, _hard_ , sliding across the tile. Asra watches, heart in his throat, as Cinis scrambles to his feet, a low and pained growl building in his throat. Louder, Asra thinks, than any cat he’s ever heard before.

Lucio pauses to look down at the cat. And then his face splits into a wild grin, and he starts to walk over to Cinis with heavy, angry strides.

“No!” Kai shouts. She grabs at his heel to try and stop him—only for Lucio to kick back.

Asra hears the crunch of her nose as his metal boot collides with it. She cries out in pain, but tries to hold on anyway—until Lucio stomps on her hand, _hard_ , and Asra hears the bones of her fingers snap before she _screams_.

The count yanks hard on Asra’s wrist. “Sit _down_!”

Faust is a writhing mess of wordless panic and misery in his scarf.

Asra watches as Lucio strides over to Cinis—as the cat’s growls grow lower, and louder, and all the fur on his tiny little body seems to stand higher, and higher, and his eyes glow brighter, and brighter.

“Nothing personal,” Lucio tells Cinis. “But you’re putting up a _much_ better fight than the girl.”

Lucio raises his arm, claws splayed.

Kai screams.

Cinis’s eyes go white—and then all of a sudden, he bursts into flames.

It’s like the entire room grows smithy-hot in the space of a single heartbeat. Asra can feel every single person in the room _reel_ back from the intensity of it, of the flame burning where Cinis once stood.

And, as Lucio takes an uncertain step back, that flame grows, starts to take shape—and then launches itself at his face with an ear-splitting _roar_.

Lucio hits the floor, and there is a massive, white-hot cat pinning him there, flames rolling off his fur as he bares his teeth, molten spit dripping down onto Lucio’s face.

Asra can see Lucio’s armour start to sizzle and melt under the heat of the cat’s paws.

_Cinis?_ Faust whispers with awe, peeking her head out of Asra’s scarf.

Lucio’s grin has only gotten wilder, and more frantic. He swipes at Cinis’s side with his claws, and the cat has to shift to dodge it—giving Lucio the space he needs to roll out from under the cat.

Cinis starts to circle Lucio, growling low in his throat. Lucio scrambles to his feet, and spares a glance backwards towards where the roots still have his sword trapped—close to Kai, out of reach.

Kai has pulled herself up into a sitting position, clutching her hand to her chest, blood streaming down her face, her eyes wide with wonder as she stares at Cinis.

“Alright,” Lucio says. He wipes his face with the back of his hand. “ _That’s_ a first.”

Cinis snarls—and launches himself at Lucio.

Lucio brings his iron arm up—and he staggers under the weight of Cinis as the great cat locks his jaw onto Lucio’s wrist. Cinis starts to burn brighter, and Asra watches the metal under his teeth begin to burn, orange to yellow to white hot—

Lucio turns as he falls back, swinging his arm _hard_ to the side with a yell. Cinis lands on all four paws, raking great burning claw marks in the tile as he skids to a halt.

Lucio is already on his feet—and as Cinis launches himself again, Lucio grabs the clasp of his heavy red cloak and throws it at Cinis before turning tail and bolting for his sword.

It gives Cinis only a moment’s pause—the heavy fur cowl of the cloak takes a precious minute to burn as Cinis claws at it, snarling. The skin at the back of Asra’s neck rises at the smell of burning fur filling the room, just as Cinis knocks the smoking cowl aside and chases after Lucio.

Lucio reaches the sword. He rips it out of the roots, and whirls to face Cinis again.

Lucio takes a swing—Cinis deflects it with one massive paw, and advances.

Lucio claws at Cinis’s face—and Cinis catches his metal claws in his teeth, clenching down with his massive jaw. He _yanks_ , hard, digging claws into the smoking tile. Lucio falls, sprawling on the ground, and Cinis lunges for his throat—

And Lucio thrusts his sword into Cinis’s side.

Cinis roars in pain.

Kai _screams_.

Lucio throws the cat off him—and Asra watches an arc of white-hot blood in the air as Lucio pulls the sword out, and he watches as Cinis falls, tries to get up, and then falls again. His flames weaken, then flicker, and then die out—leaving only a black panther on the floor, his side rising and falling in desperate, steadily weakening gasps for air.

Lucio’s sword is twisted beyond recognition—the edge dulled by the heat of Cinis’s blood, and then the rapid cooling as the temperature room in the drops as the cat’s flames fail. Lucio doesn’t look much better: there’s blood smeared all over the side of his face from his ear, down his neck and onto his armour. The armour looks like it’s been crushed and then tossed into a fire it’s so dented and burnt, partially melted in places, and looks to be physically paining him as he rolls his arm, then his neck.

He pants for breath as he stands over Cinis, his eyes wild, his grin splitting his face nearly in two.

“Nice try,” he spits out, raising his sword above his head.

The tiles beneath his feet split open, knocking his balance off-centre, and more tree roots start to grow through the cracks.

As Lucio stumbles back, trying to catch his footing, Kai throws her whole body at his side.

They both go tumbling, sprawling onto the floor. Kai tries to grab his sword, but her broken hand hinders her, and Lucio uses the pommel to hit her in the forehead. It collides with a _crack_ , and she’s stunned enough for Lucio to simply grab her with his metal arm and throw her to the floor.

Asra tries to yank free of his uncle’s grasp—but Sahir is steady, his grip on Asra’s wrist unflinching.

Kai rolls a few feet, before lying still.

Lucio digs his sword tip into the broken tile. He leans on it as he stands, breathing heavily. He’s not so much grinning now as bearing his teeth, as he takes the few unsteady steps that separate him from Kai.

“Bravo,” he says, through gritted teeth. “Bra- _fucking_ -vo. Made me fight for my goddamn city, didn’t you? Made it _hard_.”

Kai doesn’t move. Lucio kicks her shoulder, and she rolls onto her back with a pained whimper.

Cinis tries to move—his muscles twitch in an aborted attempt to stand, and he lets out a low, ragged breath that sounds like it was supposed to be a growl.

“I was just going to cut your head off,” Lucio says, reaching down and closing his iron hand around Kai’s throat. “But I think I’ll make it _hard_ for you, too.”

“ _Kai_!’ Asra screams.

Lucio lifts her in the air by her throat.

“Hang on!” Asra cries, finally breaking free of his uncle’s grip. “Kai I’m coming _hang on_ —”

Someone grabs him from behind—and he throws out a burst of energy, a wild and unformed spell, trying to throw them back. But they are unaffected by his attempt, only gripping him _tighter_ as Asra’s magic slides off their armour.

“You interfere and you’ve killed us all, idiot child!” the Pontifex hisses in his ear.

He hears a commotion off where Muriel stands, cursing and shouting and scuffling and swords being drawn, and he hears someone big collide with the floor. _Muriel_ , he knows, his heart racing in his chest—but he can’t look away from Kai, her legs dangling in the air, tearing her fingernails on Lucio’s iron arm as he holds her, as her face grows darker, and darker, as her breaths begin to wheeze and her attempts to pry herself free grow weaker—

“Kill me instead!” Asra screams. “Let her go, kill me instead!”

The magic in Lucio’s arm burns brighter, and he tightens his grip.

Asra can’t look away. He doesn’t want to see this but he can’t look away—

She takes one last ragged, wheezing breath. And then her expression falls slack, and Asra can see her eyes turn from umber to orange, to red, to yellow, to blinding white—

Lucio grins and grins—holding her without pause, without remorse, as her limbs go slack and her arms hang useless at her sides. But _still_ she meets his gaze, her eyes burning, holding her breath as Lucio’s expression twists, and his feral smile begins to falter.

“What—” he starts to ask, before he chokes. His free hand goes to his throat, his expression rapidly shifting to confusion, and then alarm, and then _terror_.

He drops Kai on the floor, and starts to frantically claw at his armour.

Kai hits the floor, gasping for breath. Without hesitating, she starts to crawl over to Cinis, her whole body wracked as she coughs and gasps and _tries to breathe_ , in between choking on her own sobs.

Lucio stumbles backwards. He tries to get off his breastplate, but it’s melted shut. He claws so furiously at his neck that he draws blood—and Asra can see his skin there start to light up, as if there is some light source just under its surface…

He tries to scream—but only smoke pours out of his throat, and light from a flickering flame burning somewhere inside him.

Burning him alive from the inside out.

The entire court watches Lucio claw at his skin. They watch him try to stumble towards Kai, only to fall onto the floor in a heap of metal and writhing limbs.

Kai has reached Cinis, and is halfway through curling protectively over his side as she turns, and meets Lucio’s gaze.

Asra cannot see the man’s expression as the flames burning his insides start to consume his whole body. Asra cannot see what passes over Lucio’s face as his armour melts into his flesh, as the magic in his iron arm burns brighter and brighter before faltering, and growing dark. As the arm itself begins to break in the heat, and twist, before it, too, melts. As the flames course over his entire body, and his skull caves in, and the fire _consumes_ him, down to his last shred of clothing.

Kai does not look away. She doesn’t even blink.

When the fire dies, all that is left of Lucio is melted iron and ash.

Cinis twitches, trying to rise. Kai turns back to him, finally, pressing her shaking hands against his wound, but she does not try to heal him. “It’s okay,” she tries to say, her voice ragged and scraping. “You did so good, I’m so sorry, it’s—”

Asra shakes free of the Pontifex’s hold. He bolts down to Kai, scrambling over tree roots and broken tiles, and he kneels on the floor and reaches for her.

“Kai,” he says, softly. “Kai—”

“Help him,” Kai blurts, her tears mixing with the blood on her face. “Asra, _please_ , help him.”

She takes his hands and presses them to Cinis’s wound. Asra’s stomach turns—it’s a _lot_ of blood, and it feels hotter than blood should be. But Cinis is still breathing—so Asra closes his eyes, and tries to calm his racing heart.

It’s almost a relief, the feeling of healing magic passing from his hands to Cinis. Like a cool wind on a hot day, it steadies him a little. And when he opens his eyes, Cinis gets to his feet and shoves his face right into the crook of Kai’s neck, as if he was still a tiny little cat. He doesn’t really purr—it’s kind of a soft growl, the noise he makes, as if he’s trying to purr but can’t.

Kai throws her arms around Cinis’s neck, weeping openly. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Asra knows he should give her space—but he can’t help himself, but reach for her. He can’t help but put a hand on her shoulder, and try to offer her some measure of comfort.

That’s when she reaches for him with her good hand. She reaches for him, taking the hand in his lap and pulling him closer, so that his hand rests over her heart.

He lets himself be pulled. He tucks himself alongside Kai and Cinis, close enough to feel the heat rising off Cinis’s massive body, and buries his face in her hair as she weeps into Cinis’s fur, and tries to stop his own shaking, his own trembling.

She’s alive. He didn’t lose her.

She’s _alive_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warnings:** extreme violence, stabbing, blood, bones breaking, choking, character death.
> 
> cedarmoons: for about 5 secs i thought u had killed cinis  
> playwithdinos: I would never he's my fave
> 
> Anyway the whole fire panther thing probably only made sense to everyone who read [Reversed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493776/chapters/35967960). Didn't really feel like setting that reveal up all over again.
> 
> Aisha: where the fuck did a cat learn how to shapeshift and light on goddamn fire  
> Salim, who knew what Cinis was all the way back in chapter 3 and forgot to share with the class: ..... oh yeah.
> 
> If you're upset by Lucio's death in this chapter, just uh. Pretend it's a different Lucio.


	7. In the Embers

Asra tries to heal the rest of Kai’s wounds as she begins to calm a little, kneeling on the floor with her in front of the entire court.

The Pontifex approaches first, waving their hands furiously. “What the hell was that?” they demand, and over the mess of Kai’s hair Asra can see their wild eyes, and the genuine _fear_ they’re trying to hide behind their scowl. “Since when could a _useless schoolgirl_ burn a man alive from the inside out?”

Cinis snarls when the Pontifex gets too close, raising his hackles.

They take a few hurried steps back—and that’s when Asra’s mother catches up to them, grabbing their arm and yanking them farther away. “Kalani just saved the city, you ungrateful _shit_ ,” she snaps. “Now if you would do _your_ job and see to the _rest_ of the enemy forces in this room?”

When Asra looks to Lucio’s soldiers, standing under guard, he sees them pale-faced and slack-jawed. One of them, whose armour is decorated with protective magic sigils, clears their throat and stands a little taller, once they realise they are under scrutiny.

“I can confirm that there was no outside interference in the duel—the young lady has won under the terms agreed. Our forces will disperse.”

It seems like the whole room lets out a collective sigh of relief. Some cheer—though they are few and far between. Asra sees fans fluttering and people whispering to one another as they glance nervously at Kai, and he sees guards getting up off the floor and trying to straighten their uniforms, asking one another, _what happened?_

He only gets a glimpse of Muriel slipping through a side door.

The count’s voice rises above the sudden rush of noise. “Then we will leave you to make the announcement to your troops.”

The room falls still once again. Asra looks to his uncle and finds his face impassive, his expression calm. As if speaking about the weather.

The mercenary who had spoken only glances at the count—instead, they keep their wary gaze mostly on Kai. “If the Sun-Sighted is the least among your magicians, ours cannot best them. You have our word—we will honour the terms of the duel.” 

Count Sahir smiles, and leans back in his chair.

No matter how much Asra glares at him, the count does not glance at them even once.

Asra leads Kai away from court, up the back stairs, rushing her past servants and courtiers who look at Kai with a mix of awe and fear. Muriel is already in their room, waiting for them, sitting with Inanna on the floor and stroking her fur.

There are tears tracking down his cheeks already. They begin anew when he sees her, and his eyes follow the lines between her broken nose, her battered cheek, and the dark bruises already forming on her neck.

She starts crying again when she sees him: his uniform torn and scuffed, and dirt on his face. Even as he surges forward to embrace her, she tries to reach for his face and turn it.

Asra watches Muriel hold Kai like glass—and watches Kai cling to him, as if he is a rock and she is drowning in a river. She cries, and cries, and he does not say anything. He just holds her, tears streaming down his face and into in her hair.

Eventually Kai cries herself out again. She sits on the bed, still as stone, while Asra heals her nose. She doesn’t even wince as it snaps back into place—but as his hands ghost over her throat she shivers, closes her eyes, and takes a steadying breath.

She clutches Muriel’s hand with white knuckles.

Muriel looks about to say something—but he closes his mouth, then takes a breath, and lets Asra finish healing her throat. 

Asra takes her other hand in his, passing healing magic over her broken fingers and wrist. She inhales sharply as the bones shift back into place, and it trembles as she lets it out again.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice low but whole again. She twines her fingers in Asra’s, and squeezes them tight—tight enough to hurt, but he doesn’t mind.

After a while, after immeasurable heartbeats in silence, Kai opens her mouth and says, “I need a bath.”

They help her out of her tattered and bloodstained dress together, having to peel it off her skin in places where the blood has crusted and dried. 

Asra has never seen Kai’s tattoos before—he had caught glimpses of them while they were healing, has seen where they start on her arm when her shirt has slipped down her shoulder. He sees the sun now, over the back of her shoulder, etched into her skin in bold, dark lines.

He finds himself staring at it until Kai steps around the corner, and disappears into the bathroom.

Inanna, Faust and Cinis watch over her as she bathes, while Muriel and Asra give her space, sitting on the couch in the receiving room.

Over and over, Asra thinks of that first meeting with Jay, five years ago. _And no good at the other primals? Wind? Water? Fire?_

“Your uncle,” Muriel starts to say, then stops.

Asra glances over. Muriel is frowning, as if trying to figure out what to say. 

Before Asra can say, _I’ll deal with him_ , Muriel looks Asra in the eye and says, “He wasn’t surprised.”

Asra frowns, uncomprehending. “What?”

Muriel clears his throat, and shifts uneasily. “Nothing that happened today surprised him. Not—not hearing that Lucio wanted a duel, not that he chose Kai, Cinis, not—not the end. He was just… sad. The whole time.”

Asra is still processing that when he hears Faust call to him—and he goes to the bathroom immediately, heart in his throat.

But Kai is still standing by the bathing pool, clutching a robe around herself with a worried Faust looped around her shoulders, and a glowering Cinis standing guard at her side. She has not stepped into the pool—she’s only staring at the gently steaming water with a vacant expression.

“Kai?” he asks, and she takes a sharp breath. “Is it too hot?”

“Yeah,” she says, at length. “If you could—just a little.”

He touches the charms that keep the water hot to turn then down, and then cools the water with his magic until the steam subsides. It’s tepid, he thinks, but Kai gives him an attempt at a grateful smile for his efforts.

He helps her step into the pool, and pointedly looks away while she removes the robe. He takes it from her, and when their hands touch she does not shy away.

“I think I need help with my hair,” she says, into the silence. “Maybe you and Muriel could…?”

As Kai soaks in the cold water, Asra gently washes her back, and the blood from her face, while Muriel combs the tangles out of her hair with short, delicate movements. Asra disposes of her dress and the bathrobe while Muriel starts combing oils through her hair to make it shine again—and then Asra combs her hair a little, too, because it makes him feel better.

After a while, Kai tucks her knees up to her chest, and rests her chin on top of them.

“There was a position for me at court, in Manakea.”

Asra’s hand stills. But Kai keeps staring ahead, so he just keeps combing her hair, gently, waiting for her to gather her thoughts.

“My father had arranged it. Said it couldn’t wait—so he came all the way to school, to convince my professors to take my exams early.”

Cinis, lying next to Asra, lifts one massive paw and rests it on Kai’s shoulder.

“They… they allowed it. And I didn’t want to leave, so… I failed them on purpose.”

Asra keeps combing her hair as gently as he can, and Muriel scratches Inanna’s ears slowly, studying Kai with a thoughtful expression.

“And the headmaster… she got angry. She knew I was faking it, knew I could have passed. She accused me of trying to tarnish the name of the school. And then she said she would be my opponent in my combat magic exam. Which… I had never studied.”

Faust slithers from Asra’s lap to her shoulders, and gently presses her face to Kai’s cheek until she looks up again.

“I guess—I should have started with this. Should have—there’s a test you take, when you first go to the school. To see what you’ll study. And… I was good with earth magic, and plants, and no good at everything else… Except then they had me hold a candle, and light it by thinking about it. And I tried, and someone was yelling at me because I wasn’t getting it…” She shrugs. “I lit their robes on fire, but it was an accident. And then the whole room, and it wouldn’t stop… And it was fine, no one got hurt, but… But I was six. Every time they tried to put me in a class and have me use fire magic, I just froze up, and started crying. Until my botany professor talked to the headmistress, and they stopped.”

There’s a buzz like a low rumble in the air, and Kai turns to smile at Cinis. “I wasn’t afraid of you at all,” she tells him, fondly. “No—you were helping. You were so good.”

That seems to appease the big cat a little. He blinks at her slowly, and then leans forward until she presses her forehead to his.

When she’s settled in the bath again, she continues. “So when I duelled the headmaster, and she was yelling at me, and she was deflecting all my spells and breaking my barriers… I got so scared, I just lit her on fire. I didn’t _mean_ to. And it was—it was _bad_. No one could put it out, and everyone started yelling at me but I didn’t know what to do…”

She trails off. Eventually, Muriel shifts closer, and places a hand on her shoulder.

“That’s how you were expelled,” Muriel finishes for her. 

Kai lets out a trembling breath. “She… She got an awful scar. And I swore I’d never use fire magic again, but…”

She starts shaking. She bites her lip, hard enough Asra worries she’ll bite right through it—and then she starts crying again.

“Hey,” Asra says, softly. He drops her hair and leans forward, taking her shoulders firmly in his hands. “Hey, Kai, it’s not your fault. Nothing—nothing that happened today was your fault. Okay?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t—this time it was _one person,_ what happens next time? Is it two? A hundred? I don’t want this to come around again I can’t—I _can’t_ —”

And Asra doesn’t think about his clothes, or even that she’s naked. He gets into the water himself, at her side—fully dressed, jewellery and all—and she latches onto him, weeping incoherently, as he tries to hush her, and wraps his arms around her, ignoring the cold temperature of the water.

When Muriel makes to stand up, embarrassed, Kai reaches back without looking for his hand. She tugs at him until Muriel joins them as well, still in that guard uniform. Water spills out over the sides of the bath, but no one pays it any mind; Asra only notices at all because Cinis lets out a disgruntled rumble as his paws get wet. 

Muriel encircles them both, one arm over Asra’s shoulders and the other protectively across Kai’s back, and tugs them close to his chest, and closer still to each other.

All three of them are shivering in the water before Kai finally allows herself to be led to bed. She falls asleep faster than Asra expected her to—but she’s exhausted to the bone; from crying, from her wounds, from using so much magic. She curls into Muriel’s broad chest, and Asra lies against her back while she clutches his hand close to her heart.

Muriel’s other hand comes to rest in the small of Asra’s back. Their eyes meet over Kai’s hair; Muriel looks a _wreck_ , worry having carved dark circles under his eyes and drawn his face in pale lines.

Asra can’t imagine he looks any better.

They wait together until Kai’s breaths even out, and she falls asleep. And then Asra waits a little longer, feeling her steady breathing, and Muriel’s hand warm on his back. They do not speak, for fear of waking her—but neither can they fall asleep.

Asra’s thoughts spin, uselessly, to keep him from remembering the sound of Kai’s screams. Of her nose breaking. Or the sight of her on the floor, or Lucio’s face when he picked her up by the throat.

Her eyes gone white, burning with a fire to rival Cinis.

_Sun-sighted_. But—it’s a metaphor. She can see through illusions—that’s what that means.

Again, he thinks of that first meeting with Jay, five years ago: _A Sun-sighted girl-child, from our line, practically radiating…_

Radiating with _what_? She hadn’t finished that thought, had she?

He buries his face in Kai’s hair and tries to _think_ —but instead he thinks of his uncle, who was _not surprised_. Who heard Kai enter the room in the midst of all that chaos, and looked _relieved_.

What did he whisper to Kai?

Why did he let Lucio choose?

Eventually, Asra gives up on sleep. He slowly untangles himself from Kai and Muriel. The latter only moves enough to watch him, a knowing look in his eyes. Well, trust Muriel to know what Asra wants to do before Asra does, himself.

Kai is too exhausted to even stir—not even as Muriel curls tighter around her, and Cinis slips into Asra’s place.

The great panther’s ember orange eyes meet Asra’s. Asra feels that low rumble in his thoughts again—and he’s not sure what Cinis is trying to say, but he _thinks_ the whole impression is… slightly murderous. Possibly possessive. Not directed at Asra, however.

_I’m only going to talk_ , Asra thinks back, clear and steady.

Cinis huffs, unimpressed. But then he presses his great head into Kai’s hair, and finally settles down around her.

The halls of the palace are surprisingly busy for the early hour of the morning. Asra casts a _never mind me_ spell with a thought, and everyone just moves past him. Mostly servants or guards, each of them too exhausted now to be even hurrying. At this point it’ll have been a full day and more on their feet, for everyone Asra sees—most of them seem asleep on their feet already.

Most people aren’t talking. There’s a sombre air in the palace—grateful, Asra thinks, _relieved_ even, but sombre. Even the usual gossipers seem both too exhausted and too in awe of how close they came to destruction to be chatting now.

Asra comes upon his uncle’s wing just as the Consul is leaving. He lacks his usual polish and poise, but he still holds himself with a straighter back than anyone else Asra’s seen tonight.

The Consul sees Asra through the spell—hard to simply not mind him here, he supposes—and pauses, his expression troubled.

“Young lord,” the Consul says. “How fares your wife?”

Asra opens his mouth to answer. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he closes it and simply shrugs.

The Consul gives him sympathetic, if exhausted, smile. “She performed no small feat for this city. I understand she was not prepared for the reality of combat—such as that was. If she should require a sympathetic ear… I know some who are trained in the art of easing grief. In healing the spirit.”

Asra is too exhausted and too awake to feel indignation, or gratitude. He can only nod. “Thank you,” he says, his voice at once too soft and too loud in the hall. “I will pass that on. Is… the count still awake?”

The Consul inclines his head. “I could not convince him to rest.”

He finds his uncle on the balcony, sitting at a table set with a chess board. He looks out to the faintest hint of sunlight at the horizon, so Asra cannot he his expression as he approaches. There is an open bottle of wine on the table, nearly empty, a clean wine glass next to it and a full one in Sahir’s hand.

As Asra comes to stand on the side of the table opposite his uncle, Sahir finally turns and looks at him, his expression so blank it must have been forced that way.

“Asra,” his uncle says, after regarding him a moment. “How is Kalani?”

The heat of anger mixes unhappily with uncertainty in Asra’s belly. He clenches his fists in his pockets.

Sahir gestures with his wine glass. “Come, sit. Pour yourself a glass of wine. It’s been too long since we played a game of chess.”

Asra takes a deep, unsteady breath. His uncle will not quite meet his eyes, and speaks with the slowness of one who is a little drunk, or one who is watching carefully what they say.

“You tell me what happens next,” Asra says, his voice tight.

Sahir only stares down at his wine.

“Do I get drunk with you on the balcony? Do we play chess? You probably win, since you already know all the moves we’re going to make.”

His uncle sighs, lifts the glass to his lips, and drains it. He reaches for the bottle and pours the last of it into his glass, before saying, “Only my own, Asra.”

Asra wants to throw his hands in the air. He wants to launch himself at his uncle and strangle him. He paces instead, too furious to stand in one place.

“How long have you known?” Asra snaps.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” his uncle drawls. “How long have I known that my sister would have a child with white hair and unparalleled magical power? Since I was four. How long have I known that you would discover my secret and storm in here? Since I was twelve.”

Asra lets out a sigh that sounds more like a frustrated growl. “You _know_ what I mean.”

“Of course I do. I have seen this conversation in my dreams over a hundred times, now.”

Asra rakes a hand through his hair. “Who else knows?”

“No one. You are the first.”

“First?”

But Sahir ignores that question to take a long drag from his wine glass. “I knew a sun-sighted woman would save our city before I knew I would even _lead_ that city. I saw the fires burn in her eyes before you took your first halting steps in my dreams. Before I knew she was your _wife_ I knew her, and I knew she would weep in your arms when it was done before you were old enough to hold anything at all. I have known today would come most my whole life, Asra, and I have not _enjoyed_ that knowing. Not at all.”

He shakes his head, incredulous. “You didn’t try to stop it? You didn’t _warn_ her?”

He keeps watching his uncle’s expression, trying to get _anything_ out of him. Anger, or regret, or sorrow— _anything_.

Sahir only drinks his wine, and stares down at the chessboard. “Of course not,” he says. “If she were not there to fight for Vesuvia, you would have fallen, and Lucio would be Count in my stead.”

“You can’t know that.”

Sahir sighs darkly. “Have you already forgotten why you came here to yell at me? I _can_ know that, and I _do_. In every other possibility, Lucio wins. If you and Faust fight him, you hesitate when it is time to strike the final blow, and he tears your heart clean from your chest. Your mother and father attack Lucio to try and save you, the terms of the duel are violated, and the city burns.”

“You can’t _know_ that!” Asra stands over the table, trying to loom but his uncle’s blank expression makes it clear he’s not impressing anyone. “You can’t _know_ that your way is the _only_ way things have to happen. You can’t—decide _for_ us, what we choose.”

“I decided nothing,” Sahir says. “I agreed to the duel, and that Lucio should choose his opponent. He chose the terms—he chose death.”

“Kai—”

“You leaned over your teacup and told her to run. She did not. She came to the palace, when battle was inevitable, and offered her help.”

“She didn’t choose to fight! To kill someone! She didn’t choose to _marry me_ , either!”

“She chose to stay. She chose _Vesuvia_ , its people, over her own assured escape. She became its champion because of _those_ choices, Asra, your marriage only made her eligible for the position.”

“He could have killed her!”

“That,” says Sahir, “was never a possibility.”

“I don’t _care_ ,” Asra snaps. “I don’t care what you _think_ , what you’ve _seen_. You wanted Kai here to win your duel for you? Fine. She’s won it. But I’m not making her stay in this palace a moment longer. She deserves better than that.”

With that, Asra turns on his heel and storms off, stuffing his shaking hands in his pockets.

“She’ll stay where she chooses, Asra,” the count says, as Asra stalks off. “Not where you think is best.”

Asra slams the door behind him.

 

Muriel and Inanna stay with them for a week.

Kai does not leave the room once the entire time.

By the end of the week, Cinis is restless. He spends most of his time the size of a housecat, and rarely goes farther than a few paces from Kai. If someone knocks at the door, however, Cinis turns back into a panther in the space of a heartbeat, a low rumble in his throat to greet whoever approaches.

The staff are, understandably, terrified of him.

It does not stop them from trying to bring Kai gifts.

Every meal brought up is a rotating selection of her favourites. The second day, a guard goes out of their way to bring fresh pumpkin bread from the city, saying that it always cheers them up—it’s not Selasi’s, but it does make Kai smile a little. People bring potted plants in varying states of health, and it doesn’t take long for Kai to start _tutting_ over the scraggly ones and make room for them on the balcony, where they’ll get better sunlight.

Serris, with her cane and her straight, straight back, is utterly undeterred by Cinis’s posturing. She barges right in the last day of that week, wrinkling her nose and charging right through the sitting room to the bedroom, where Kai is sitting on the windowsill and looking out to the city.

“That is quite enough moping, all three of you,” she scolds them. “It smells like a menagerie in here, and I have just been informed that your wolf is antagonizing the peacocks.”

“They started it,” Muriel grumbles, while Inanna folds her ears flat against her skull, chastised.

She sighs. She turns to Kai, and leans on her cane while her expression softens. “Lady Kalani,” she says, her voice softer than Asra’s ever heard it. “We are all of us, very grateful for what you had to do to save our city, and we all understand how awful it must have been to go through that. But you are not one of your houseplants, and a few hours on the windowsill is not an acceptable alternative to going outside and getting some fresh air. I am sending in people in tomorrow morning, bright and early, to clean, and if I find you here I will be dragging you out into the gardens myself. There’s a sickly tree by the southeast wall, and the gardeners could use your expertise on the matter.”

She leaves shortly after—and Muriel pets Inanna, while Cinis as a small cat once again curls up on Kai’s lap, and she strokes his fur, still staring out at the city.

“I should take Inanna home,” Muriel says, at length. “There’s too many people here… she doesn’t like it.”

There’s a question hanging in the air—Asra can feel it, and can see it written all over Muriel’s face.

But Kai doesn’t turn around, or even acknowledge that he spoke.

“Kai,” Asra starts to say—but Muriel approaches her, and very gently takes her hand in his.

She looks up at him. Her expression is blank, but Asra can make out all the cracks in it.

“I’ll come back after if you want,” Muriel tells her. He doesn’t even blush; he just rubs the back of her hand with his thumb.

Kai tries to smile. “You go on home, Muriel,” she tells him. “I’ll be alright.”

Still, Muriel hesitates. But Asra can see that being in the palace is grating on him, even if he very rarely sees anyone but Kai and Asra. So Asra says, “I’ll let you know if Kai needs you,” and then sees Muriel and Inanna all the way out of the palace grounds.

But before Muriel slips through the gate leading to the south end of town, he turns back to Asra with a thoughtful frown. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Asra says. “She’s—she’s doing great. She’ll be great. Don’t worry.”

From Muriel’s expression, he can tell Asra doesn’t really feel it.

Asra takes his time making his way back up to their room. When he returns, he finds Kai exactly as he left her—sitting on the windowsill, her cat piled up in her lap, and her gaze still fixed on the city below them.

He watches her there a while. He watches her watch the sky, how the sun begins to approach the horizon and the faintest shade of gold begins to highlight the clouds.

“Kai,” he says at length. His voice feels heavy, saying her name.

She finally turns and looks at him.

“You don’t _have_ to stay here, you know.”

Her brows furrow ever so slightly. “What do you mean?”

Asra takes a deep breath. “I mean…” He pauses to rake a hand through his hair. He decides, after a moment, to join her on the windowsill. “I talked to the count, a few days ago.”

She raises an eyebrow. If she’s noticed that Asra has stopped referring to Sahir as his uncle, she has not said anything about it. “And?”

He wants, very badly, to take her hand. He does not. “He… Muriel told me that he wasn’t surprised, that day. When everything happened. Everyone was surprised but him.”

Kai’s eyes narrow again, and then widen a little. “He’s a Seer.”

“Yeah.”

Her fingers curl in Cinis’s fur, and he lets out a _mrr_. “I shouldn’t be surprised he has magical talent, with your mother, but… He knew? That all of this would happen?”

His throat feels thick. “Yeah. He did.”

Kai doesn’t say anything for a while. Asra watches her face for a bit, but she seems to be coming to the same conclusions he had, and he finds that he can’t watch it—so he looks down at the city, trying to ignore the pressure building in his chest.

“That’s why he wanted us married,” she says at length. “Even when your parents suggested just giving me a position at court.”

He closes his eyes. “… Yeah.”

“That’s why he said—”

Whatever she was about to say, she does not finish. She sounds both furious and distraught, and Asra cannot bring himself to look at her to figure out which it is.

In her lap, Cinis starts to purr, but it doesn’t seem to be calming her down like it normally does.

After a while, Asra says, “You don’t _have_ to stay here, you know.”

“What?”

He still can’t bring himself to look at her. “If you want to go and… live in the woods with Muriel, then that’s okay. That’s great. I’ll come visit whenever I can, and I’ll bring pumpkin bread—”

“Are you kicking me out?”

“What?” He _finally_ looks at her, but her expression has drawn neutral, and guarded. “No, no, Kai, I never—I’m only saying that I don’t want to make you stay here any more—”

“That’s what you think,” she says, her voice flat. “You think I’m only here because you’re _making_ me stay here.”

“No—”

“But now I’ve done what your uncle wanted me to, so now I’m no longer of any _use_ to you. Is that it?”

He recoils. He slips off the windowsill and stands. “I never—that’s not what I meant—”

“Well you can _tell_ your uncle that he’s stuck with me,” Kai snaps. “Because—because I’ve _earned_ this, now, haven’t I? I’ve _earned_ calling this place home, and living here, and all the food and the clothes, and you can’t just _kick me out_ now that I’ve _killed for it_.”

Asra stares down at her, all the words he wants to say catching in his throat.

She stares up at him, and then takes a deep, shaking breath, tucks her knees close to her chest and looks out into the city once again.

“Kai,” he starts to say.

“Leave me alone,” she interrupts him, her voice shaking.

He thinks of reaching out and touching her. He wants to—so, _so_ badly. But she is still angry—he knows because Cinis is on her shoulders now, glaring out of the mess of her hair at him and starting to growl, his orange eyes starting to glow brighter.

“ _Go away,”_ Kai snaps.

Asra finally turns away. He crosses to where Faust wavers, distressed, on the bed, and picks her up. She slithers into his scarf, shaking with uncertainty, while Asra walks over to the door without saying a word.

He hesitates a moment before leaving. He looks back at her, curled up into herself on the windowsill.

He opens his mouth to say something—and then shakes his head, and leaves, closing the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Theia:** I hate this revise the rest of the chapter *slams beta gavel*

**Author's Note:**

> Unending thanks to [cedarmoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarmoons) for her excellent beta work and contagious excitement about all of my silly aus.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [playwithdinos](http://playwithdinos.tumblr.com/) or [dinoswrites](http://dinoswrites.tumblr.com/).


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